
Class FU5fe 
Book.G r8Q5 



CQEffilGlfl OEPOSIS 



m 



^p Wiltvtn C ^cenfcll 



A LABRADOR DOCTOR. The Autobiography of 
Wilfred Thomasoh Grenfell. Illustrated. 

LABRADOR DAYS. Tales of the Sea Toilers. 
With frontispiece. 

TALES OF THE LABRADOR. With frontispiece. 

THE ADVENTURE OF LIFE. 

ADRIFT ON AN ICE-PAN. Illustrated. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
Boston and New York 




A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
WILFRED THOMASON GRENFELL 



Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
in 2010 witii funding from 
Tine Library of Congress 



Iittp://www.archive.org/details/labradordoctorau01gren 



A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
WH^FRED THOMASON GRENFELL 

M.D. (OXON.), C.M.G. 
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
1919 






COPYRIGHT, I919, BY WILFRED T. GRENFELL 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Ho o 

NUV -4 1919 



©CI,A586404 



PREFACE 

I HAVE long been resisting the strong pressure from 
friends that would force me to risk having to Hve along- 
side my own autobiography. It seems still an open ques- 
tion whether it is advisable, or even whether it is right — 
seeing that it calls for confessions. In the eyes of God the 
only alternative is a book of lies. Moreover, sitting down 
to write one's own life story has always loomed up before 
my imagination as an admission that one was passing the 
post which marks the last lap; and though it was a justly 
celebrated physician who told us that we might profitably 
crawl upon the shelf at half a century, that added no 
attraction for me to the effort, when I passed that goal. 

Thirty-two years spent in work for deep-sea fishermen, 
twenty-seven of which years have been passed in Labra- 
dor and northern Newfoundland, have necessarily given 
me some experiences which may be helpful to others. I 
feel that this alone justifies the writing of this story. 

To the many helpers who have cooperated with me at 
one time or another throughout these years, I owe a debt 
of gratitude which will never be forgotten, though it has 
been impossible to mention each one by name. Without 
them this work could never have been. 
. To my wife, who was willing to leave all the best the 
civilized world can offer to share my life on this lonely 
coast, I want to dedicate this book. Truth forces me to 
own that it would never have come into being without 
her, and her greater share in the work of its production 
declares her courage to face the consequences. 1 



CONTENTS 

I. Eaely Days 1 

II. School Life 15 

III. Early Work in London 37 

IV. At the London Hospital 64 
y. North Sea Work 99 

VI. The Lure of the Labrador 119 

VII. The People of Labrador 139 

VIII. Lecturing and Cruising 159 

rX. The Seal Fishery 171 

X. Three Years' Work in the British Isles 183 

XI. First Winter at St. Anthony 197 

XII. The Cooperative Movement 215 

XIII. The Mill and the Fox Farm 226 

XIV. The Children's Home 241 
XV. Problems of Education 254 

XVI. "Who HATH desired the Sea?" 270 

XVII. The Reindeer Experiment 288 

XVIII. The Ice-Pan Adventure 304 

XIX. They that do Business in Great Waters 315 

XX. Marrl^ge 331 

XXI. New Ventures 344 

XXII. Problems on Land and Sea 357 

XXIII. A Month's Holiday in Asia Minor 376 

XXIV. The War 384 
XXV. Forward Steps 403 

XXVI. The Future of the Mission 411 

XXVII. My Religious Life 424 

Index 435 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Wilfred Thomason Grenfell Frontispiece^ 

View from Mosttn House, the Author's Birthplace, , 

Parkgate, Cheshire 2 

Oxford University Rugby Union Football Team 44^ 

The Labrador Coast 120 

Eskimo Woman and Baby 128 ~ 

Eskimo Man 128^ 

Eskimo Girls 1^2 " 

Battle Harbour 140- 

A Labrador Burial 156 

The Labrador Doctor in Summer 164 

The Strathcona 1^2 

Three of the Doctor's Dogs 198 

A Komatik Journey 202 - 

The First Cooperative Store 218 

St. Anthony 226 

Inside the Orphanage 250 

Fish on the Flakes 272 

Drying the Seines 272^ 

A Part of the Reindeer Herd 296 - 

Reindeer Teams meeting a Dog Team 296 

A Spring Scene at St. Anthony 304 

Dog Race at St. Anthony 304 

Icebergs 320 
Commodore Peary on his Way back from the Pole, 

1909 340^ 

The Institute, St. John's 354"^ 

Dog Travel 368^ 

The Labrador Doctor in Winter 406 

Entrance to St. Anthony Harbour 418^ 



A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

CHAPTER I 

EARLY DAYS 

To be born on the 28th of February is not altogether 
without its compensations. It affords a subject of con- 
versation when you are asked to put your name in birth- 
day books. It is evident that many people suppose it to 
be almost an intrusion to appear on that day. However, 
it was perfectly satisfactory to me so long as it was not 
the 29th. As a boy, that was all for which I cared. Still, 
I used at times to be oppressed by the danger, so nar- 
rowly missed, of growing up with undue deliberation. 

The event occurred in 1865 in Parkgate, near Chester, 
England, whither my parents had moved to enable my 
father to take over the school of his uncle. I was always 
told that what might be called boisterous weather sig- 
nalled my arrival. Experience has since shown me that 
that need not be considered a particularly ominous 
portent in the winter season on the Sands of Dee. 

It is fortunate that the selection of our birthplace is 
not left to ourselves. It would most certainly be one of 
those small decisions which would later add to the things 
over which we worry. I can see how it would have acted 
in my own case. For my paternal forbears are really of 
Cornish extraction — a corner of our little Island to 
which attaches all the romantic aroma of the men, who, 
in defence of England, "swept the Spanish Main," and 
so long successfully singed the King of Spain's beard, 
men whose exploits never fail to stir the best blood of 
Englishmen, and among whom my direct ancestors had 



2 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

the privilege of playing no undistinguished part. On the 
other hand, my visits thither have — romance aside — 
convinced me that the restricted foreshore and the pre- 
cipitous cliffs are a handicap to the development of 
youth, compared with the broad expanses of tempting 
sands, which are after all associated with another kins- 
man, whose songs have helped to make them famous, 
Charles Kingsley. 

My mother was born in India, her father being a 
colonel of many campaigns, and her brother an engineer 
oflBcer in charge during the siege of Lucknow till relieved 
by Sir Henry Havelock. At the first Delhi Durbar no 
less than forty-eight of my cousins met, all being officers 
either of the Indian military or civil service. 

To the modern progressive mind the wide sands are a 
stumbling-block. Silting up with the years, they have 
closed the river to navigation, and converted our once 
famous Roman city of Chester into a sleepy, second-rate 
market-town. The great flood of commerce from the 
New World sweeps contemptuously past our estuary, 
and finds its clearing-house under the eternal, assertive 
smoke clouds which camouflage the miles of throbbing 
docks and slums called Liverpool — little more than a 
dozen miles distant. But the heather-clad hills of Heswall, 
and the old red sandstone ridge, which form the ancient 
borough of the "Hundred of Wirral," afford an efficient 
shelter from the insistent taint of out-of-the-worldness. 

Every inch of the Sands of Dee were dear to me. I 
learned to know their every bank and gutter. Away 
beyond them there was a mystery in the blue hills of the 
Welsh shore, only cut off from us children in reality by 
the narrow, rapid water of the channel we called the 
Deep. Yet they seemed so high and so far away. The 
people there spoke a different language from ours, and 



EARLY DAYS 3 

all their instincts seemed diverse. Our humble neighbours 
lived by the seafaring genius which we ourselves loved 
so much. They made their living from the fisheries of the 
river mouth; and scores of times we children would slip 
away, and spend the day and night with them in their 
boats. 

While I was still quite a small boy, a terrible blizzard 
struck the estuary while the boats were out, and for 
twenty-four hours one of the fishing craft was missing. 
Only a lad of sixteen was in charge of her — a boy whom 
we knew, and with whom we had often sailed. All my 
family were away fromi home at the time except myself; 
and I can still remember the thrill I experienced when, 
as representative of the *' Big House," I was taken to see 
the poor lad, who had been brought home at last, frozen 
to death. 

The men of the opposite shores were shopkeepers and 
miners. Somehow we knew that they could n't help it. 
The nursery rhyme about "Taffy was a Welshman; 
Taffy was a thief," because familiar, had not led us to 
hold any unduly inflated estimate of the Welsh character. 
One of my old nurses did much to redeem it, however. 
She had undertaken the burden of my brother and my- 
self during a long vacation, and carried us off bodily to 
her home in Wales. Her clean little cottage stood by the 
side of a road leading to the village school of the State 
Mining District of Festiniog. We soon learned that the 
local boys resented the intrusion of the two English lads, 
and they so frequently chased us off the village green, 
which was the only playground offered us, that we at 
last decided to give battle. We had stored up a pile of 
slates behind our garden wall, and lm*ing the enemy to 
the gates by the simple method of retiring before their 
advance, we saluted them with artillery fire from a 



4 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

comparatively safe entrenchment. To my horror, one of 
the first missiles struck a medium-sized boy right over 
the eye, and I saw the blood flow instantly. The awful 
comparison of David and Goliath flashed across my 
terror-stricken mind, and I fled incontinently to my 
nurse's protection. Subsequently by her adroit diplo- 
macy, we were not only delivered from justice, but gained 
the freedom of the green as well. 

Far away up the river came the great salt-water 
marshes which seemed so endless to our tiny selves. 
There was also the Great Cop, an embankment miles 
long, intended to reach "from England to Wales," but 
which was never finished because the quicksand swallowed 
up all that the workmen could pour into it. Many a time 
I have stood on the broken end, where the discouraged 
labourers had left their very shovels and picks and 
trucks and had apparently fled in dismay, as if con- 
victed of the impiousness of trying to fill the. Bottomless 
Pit. To my childish imagination the upturned wheel- 
barrows and wasted trucks and rails always suggested 
the banks of the Red Sea after the awful disaster had 
swept over Pharoah and his host. How the returning 
tide used to sweep through that to us fathomless gulch! 
It made the old river seem ever so much more wonderful, 
and ever so much more filled with adventure. 

Many a time, just to dare it, I would dive into the 
very cauldron, and let the swirling current carry me to 
the grassy sward beyond — along which I would run 
till the narrowing channel permitted my crossing to the 
Great Cop again. I would be drying myself in the sun- 
shine as I went, and all ready for my scanty garments 
when I reached my clothing once more. 

Then came the great days when the heavy nor' westers 
howled over the Sands — our sea-front was exposed to 



EARLY DAYS 5 

all the power of the sea right away to the Point of Ayr — 
the days when they came in with big spring tides, when 
we saw the fishermen doubling their anchors, and care- 
fully overhauling the holding gear of their boats, before 
the flooding tide drove them ashore, powerless to do 
more than watch them battling at their moorings like 
living things — the possessions upon which their very 
bread depended. And then this one would sink, and an- 
other would part her cable and come hurtling before 
the gale, until she crashed right into the great upright 
blocks of sandstone which, riveted with iron bands to 
their copings, were relied upon to hold the main road 
from destruction. Sometimes in fragments, and some- 
times almost entire, the craft would be slung clean over 
the torturing battlements, and be left stranded high and 
dry on our one village street, a menace to traffic, but a 
huge joy to us children. 

The fascination of the Sands was greatly enhanced by 
the numerous birds which at all times frequented them, 
in search of the abundant food which lay buried along 
the edges of the muddy gutters. There were thousands 
of sandpipers in enormous flocks, mixed with king 
plovers, dunlins, and turnstones, which followed the ebb 
tides, and returned again in whirling clouds before the 
oncoming floods. Black-and-white oyster-catchers were 
always to be found chattering over the great mussel 
patches at low water. With their reddish bills, what a 
trophy a bunch of them made as we bore them proudly 
home over our shoulders ! Then there were the big long- 
billed curlews. What a triumph when one outwitted 
them! One of my clearest recollections is discovering a 
place to which they were flighting at night by the water's 
edge; how, having no dog, I swam out for bird after bird 
as they fell to my gun — shooting some before I had 



6 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

even time to put on my shirt again; and my consequent 
blue-black shoulder, which had to be carefully hidden 
next day. There were wild ducks, too, to be surprised in 
the pools of the big salt marshes. •<■ 

From daylight to dark I would wander, quite alone, 
over endless miles, entirely satisfied to come back with 
a single bird, and not in the least disheartened if I got 
none. All sense of time usfed to be lost, and often enough 
the sandwich and biscuit for lunch forgotten, so that I 
would be forced occasionally to resort to a solitary public 
house near a colliery on our side of the water, for "tea- 
biscuits," all that they offered, except endless beer for the 
miners. I can even remember, when very hard driven, 
crossing to the Welsh side for bread and cheese. 

These expeditions were made barefoot as long as the 
cold was not too great. A diary that I assayed to keep in 
my eighth year reminds me that on my birthday, five 
miles from home in the marshes, I fell head over heels 
into a deep hole, while wading out, gun in hand, after 
some oyster-catchers which I had shot. The snow was 
still deep on the countryside, and the long trot home has 
never been quite forgotten. My grief, however, was all 
for the gun. There was always the joy of venture in those 
dear old Sands. The channels cut in them by the flowing 
tides ran deep, and often intersected. Moreover, they 
changed with the varying storms. The rapidly rising 
tide, which sent a bore up the main channel as far as 
Chester, twelve miles above us, filled first of all these 
treacherous waterways, quite silently, and often unob- 
served. To us, taught to be as much at home in the water 
as on the land, they only added spice to our wanderings. 
They were nowhere very wide, so by keeping one's head, 
and being able to swim, only our clothes suffered by it, 
and they, being built for that purpose, did not complain. 



EARLY DAYS 7 

One day, however, I remember great excitement. The 
tide had risen rapidly in the channel along the parade 
front, and the shrimp fishermen, who used push-nets in 
the channels at low tide, had returned without noticing 
that one of their number was missing. Word got about 
just too late, and already there was half a mile of water, 
beyond which, through our telescopes, we could see the 
poor fellow making frantic signals to the shore. There 
was no boat out there, and a big bank intervening, there 
seemed no way to get to him. Watching through our 
glasses, we saw him drive the long handle of his net deep 
into the sand, and cling to it, while the tide rose speedily 
around him. Meanwhile a whole bevy of his mates had 
rowed out to the bank, and were literally carrying over 
its treacherous surface one of their clumsy and heavy 
fishing punts. It was a veritable race for life; and never 
have I watched one with keener excitement. We actually 
saw his post give way, and wash downstream with him 
clinging to it, just before his friends got near. Fortu- 
nately, drifting with the spar, he again found bottom, and 
was eventually rescued, half full of salt water. I remem- 
ber how he fell in my estimation as a seaman — though 
I was only a boy at the time. 

There were four of us boys in all, of whom I was the 
second. My next brother Maurice died when he was only 
seven, and the fourth, Cecil, being five years younger 
than I, left my brother Algernon and myself as the 
only real companions for each other. Moreover, an un- 
toward accident, of which I was the unwitting cause, left 
my younger brother unable to share our play for many 
years. Having no sisters, and scarcely any boy friends, 
in the holidays, when all the boys in the school went 
home, it might be supposed that my elder brother and 
I were much thrown together. But as a matter of fact 



8 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

such was not the case, for our temperaments being en- 
tirely different, and neither of us having any idea of 
giving way to the other, we seldom or ever found our 
pleasures together. And yet most of the worst scrapes 
into which we fell were cooperative affairs. Though I 
am only anxious to shoulder my share of the responsi- 
bility in the escapades, as well as in every other line of 
life, my brother Algernon possessed any genius to which 
the family could lay claim, in that as in every other line. 
He was my father over again, while I was a second 
edition of my mother. Father was waiting to get into 
the sixth form at Rugby when he was only thirteen years 
old. He was a brilliant scholar at Balliol, but had been 
compelled to give up study and leave the University 
temporarily owing to brain trouble. He never published 
anything, but would reel off brilliant short poems or 
essays for friends at a moment's notice. I used always 
to remark that in whatever company he was; he was 
always deferred to as an authority in anything approach- 
ing'^classics. He could read and quote Greek and Latin 
like English, spoke German and French fluently, while 
he was an excellent geologist, and Fellow of the Geo- 
graphical Society. Here is quite a pretty little effusion 
of his written at eight years of age: 

O, Glorious Sun, in thy palace of light. 
To behold thee methinks is a beautiful sight. 
O, Glorious Sun, come out of thy cloud, 
No longer thy brightness in darkness shroud. 
Let thy glorious beams like a golden Flood 
Pour over the hills and the valleys and wood. 
See! Mountains of light around him rise, 
WhUe he in a golden ocean lies: 
O, Glorious Sun, in thy Palace of Light 
To behold thee methinks is a beautiful sight. 
Algernon Sydney Grenfell 
Aged eight years 



EARLY DAYS 9 

Some of my brother's poems and hymns have been 
published in the school magazine, or printed privately; 
but he, too, has only published a Spanish grammar, a 
Greek lexicon, and a few articles in the papers. While 
at Oxford he ran daily, with some friends, during one 
"eights week" a cynical comic paper called "The Rat- 
tle," to boost some theories he held, and which he wished 
to enforce, and also to "score" a few of the dons to 
whom he objected. This would have resulted in his being 
asked to retire for a season from the seat of learning at 
the request of his enemies, had not our beloved provost 
routed the special cause of the whole trouble, who was 
himself contributing to a London society paper, by re- 
plying that it was not to be wondered at if the scurrilous 
rags of London found an echo in Oxford. Moreover, a 
set of "The Rattle" was ordered to be bound and placed 
in the college archives, where it may still be seen. 

My father having a very great deal of responsibility 
and worry during the long school terms, as he was not 
only head master, but owned the school as well, which 
he had purchased from his great-uncle, used to leave 
almost the day the holidays began and travel abroad 
with my mother. This partly accounts for the very un- 
usual latitude allowed to us boys in coming and going 
from the house — no one being anxious if now and again 
we did not return at night. The school matron was left 
in charge of the vast empty barracks, and we had the 
run of play-field, gymnasium, and everything else we 
wanted. To outwit the matron was always considered 
fair play by us boys, and on many occasions we were 
more than successful. 

One time, when we had been acquiring some new lines 
of thought from some trashy boys' books of the period, 
we became fired with the desire to enjoy the ruling pas- 



10 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

sion of the professional burglar. Though never kept 
short of anythmg, we decided that one night we would 
raid the large school storeroom while the matron slept. 
As always, the planning was entrusted to my brother. 
It was, of course, a perfectly easy affair, but we played 
the whole game "according to Cavendish." We let our- 
selves out of the window at midnight, glued brown paper 
to the window panes, cut out the putty, forced the catch, 
and stole sugar, currants, biscuits, and I am ashamed 
to say port wine — which we mulled in a tin can over 
the renovated fire in the matron's own sanctum. In the 
morning the remainder was turned over to fishermen 
friends who were passing along shore on their way to 
catch the early tide. I? 

I had no share in two other of my brother's famous 
escapades, though at the time it was a source of keen 
regret, for we were sent to different public schools, as 
being, I suppose, incompatible. But we heard with pride 
how he had extracted phosphorus from the chemical 
laboratory and while drawing Imninous ghosts on the 
wall for the benefit of the timorous, had set fire to the 
large dormitory and the boys' imderclothing neatly laid 
out on the beds, besides burning himself badly. Later he 
pleaded guilty to beeswaxing the seat of the boys in front 
of him in chapel, much to the detriment of their trousers 
and the destruction of the dignity of Sunday worship. 

During the time that my parents were away we never 
found a moment in which to be lonely, but on one occa- 
sion it occurred to us that the company of some friends 
would add to our enjoyment. Why we waited till my 
father and mother departed I do not know, but I re- 
call that immediately they had gone we spent a much- 
valued sixpence in telegraphing to a cousin in London 
to come down to us for the hoHdays. Our message read; 



EARLY DAYS 11 

"Dear Sid. Come down and stay the holidays. Father 
has gone to Aix." We were somewhat chagrined to re- 
ceive the following day an answer, also by wire: "Not 
gone yet. Father." It appeared that my father and 
mother had stayed the night in London in the very house 
to which we had wired, and Sid. having to ask his father's 
permission in order to get his railway fare, our uncle had 
accepted the invitation to my father. It was character- 
istic of my parents that Sid. cam© duly along, but they 
could not keep from sharing the joke with my uncle. 

During term-time some of our grown-up relatives 
would occasionally visit us. But alas, it was only their 
idiosyncrasies which used to make any impression upon 
us. One, a great-uncle, and a very distinguished person, 
being Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, and a 
great friend of the famous Dr. Jowett, the chancellor, 
was the only man we knew who ever, at any time, stood 
up long to my father in argmnent. It was only on rare 
occasions that we ever witnessed such a contest, but I 
shall never forget one which took place in the evening 
in our drawing-room. My great-uncle was a small man, 
rather stout and pink, and almost bald-headed. He got 
so absorbed in his arguments, which he always delivered 
walking up and down, that on this occasion, coming to 
an old-fashioned sofa, he stepped right up onto the seat, 
climbed over the back, and went on all the time with his 
remarks, as if only punctuating them thereby. 

Whether some of our pranks were suggested by those 
of which we heard, I do not remember. One of my father's 
yams, however, always stuck in my memory. For once, 
being in a very good humour, he told us how when some 
distinguished old lady had come to call on his father — 
a house master with Arnold at Rugby — he had been 
especially warned not to interrupt this important person, 



12 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

wlio had come to see about her son's entering my grand- 
father's " House." It so happened that quite uncon- 
sciously the lady in question had seated herself on an old 
cane-bottomed armchair in which father had been play- 
ing, thus depriving him temporarily of a toy with which 
he desired to amuse himself. He never, even in later life, 
was noted for undue patience, and after endeavouring 
in vain to await her departure, he somehow secured a 
long pin. With this he crawled from behind under the 
seat, and by discreetly probing upwards, succeeded sud- 
denly in dislodging his enemy. 

Our devotions on Sunday were carried out in the parish 
church of the village of Neston, there being no place of 
worhip of the Established Church in our little village. 
In term-time we were obliged to go morning and evening 
to the long services, which never made any concessions 
to youthful capacities. So in holiday-time, though it was 
essential that we should go in the morning to represent 
the house, we were permitted to stay home in the eve- 
ning. But even the mornings were a time of great weari- 
ness, and oft-recurrent sermons on the terrible fate which 
awaited those who never went to church, and the still 
more untoward end which was in store for frequenters 
of dissenting meeting-houses, failed to awaken in us the 
respect due to the occasion. 

On the way to church we had generally to pass by 
those who dared even the awful fate of the latter. It was 
our idea that to tantalize us they wore especially gor- 
geous apparel while we had to wear black Etons and a 
top hat — which, by the way, greatly annoyed us. One 
waistcoat especially excited our animosity, and from it 
we conceived the title "specklebelly," by which we ever 
afterwards designated the whole "genus nonconformist." 
The entrance to the chapel (ours was the Church!) was 



EARLY DAYS 13 

through a door in a high wall, over which we could not 
see; and my youthful brain used to conjure up unright- 
eous and strange orgies which we felt must take place in 
those precincts which we were never permitted to enter. 
Our Sunday Scripture lessons had groimded us very 
familiarly with the perverse habits of that section of the 
Chosen People who would serve Baal and Moloch, when 
it obviously paid so much better not to do so. But al- 
though we counted the numbers which we saw going in, 
and sometimes met them comimg out, they seemed never 
to lessen perceptibly. On this account our minds, with 
the merciless logic of childhood, gradually discounted 
the threatened calamities. 

This must have accounted for the lapse in our own 
conduct, and a sort of comfortable satisfaction that the 
Almighty contented Himself in merely counting noses 
in the pews. For even though it was my brother who got 
into trouble, I shall never forget the harangue on im- 
piety that awaited us when a most unchristian sexton 
reported to our father that the pew in front of ours had 
been foimd chalked) on the back, so as to make its oc- 
cupants the object of undisguised attention from the 
rest of the congregation. As circumstantial evidence also 
against us, he offered some tell-tale squares of silver 
paper, on which we had been cooking chocolates on the 
steam pipes during the sermon. 

In all my childhood I can only remember one single 
punishment, among not a few which I received, which I 
resented — and for years I never quite forgot it. Some 
one had robbed a very favourite apple tree in our orchard 
— an escapade of which I was perfectly capable, but in 
this instance had not had the satisfaction of sharing. 
Some evidence had been lodged against me, of which I 
was not informed, and I therefore had no opportunity 



14 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

to challenge it. I was asked before a whole class of my 
schoolmates if I had committed the act, and at once 
denied it. Without any hearing I was adjudged guilty, 
and promptly subjected to the punishment of the day 
— a good birching. On every occasion on which we 
were offered the alternative of detention, we invariably 
"plumped" for the rod, and got it over quickly, and, as 
we considered, creditably — taking it smiling as long as 
we could. But that one act of injustice, the disgrace 
which it carried of making me a liar before my friends, 
seared my very soul. I vowed I would get even whatever 
it cost, and I regret to say that I had n't long to wait the 
opportunity. For I scored both the apples and the he 
against the punishment before many months. Nor was 
I satisfied then. It rankled in my mind both by day and 
by night; and it taught me an invaluable lesson — never 
to suspect or condemn rashly. It was one of Dr. Arnold's 
boys at Rugby, I believe, who summed up his. master's 
character by saying, "The head was a beast, but he was 
always a just beast." * 

At fourteen years of age my brother was sent to Rep- 
ton, to the house of an uncle by marriage — an arrange- 
ment which has persuaded me never to send boys to 
their relatives for training. My brother's pranks were un- 
doubtedly many, but they were all boyish and legitimate 
ones. After a time, however, he was removed at his own 
request, and sent to CHfton, where he was head of the 
school, and the school house also, under Dr. Percival, 
the late Bishop of Hereford. From there he took an open 
scholarship for Oxford. 

It was most wisely decided to send us to separate 
schools, and therefore at fourteen I found myself at 
Marlborough — a school of nearly six hundred resident 
boys, on entering which I had won a scholarship. 



CHAPTER II 

SCHOOL LIFE 

Maelborough "College," as we say in England for 
a large University preparatory school, is situated in 
Wiltshire, in a perfectly beautiful country, close to the 
Savernake Forest — one of the finest in all England. As 
everything and everybody was strange to me on my 
arrival, had I been brought up to be less self-reliant the 
events of my first day or two would probably have im- 
pressed themselves more deeply on my memory than 
is the case. Some Good Samaritan, hearing that I was 
bound for a certain house, allowed me to follow him from 
the station to the inn — for a veritable old inn it was. 
It was one of those lovely old wayside hostels along the 
main road to the west, which, with the decline of coach- 
ing days, found its way into the market, and had fallen 
to the hammer for the education of youth. Exactly how 
the adaptation had been accomplished I never quite 
understood. The building formed the end of a long 
avenue of trees and was approached through high gates 
from the main road. It was flanked on the east side by 
other houses, which fitted in somewhat inharmoniously, 
but served as school-rooms, dining-hall, chapel, racquets 
and fives courts, studies, and other dwelling-houses. The 
whole was entirely enclosed so that no one could pass in 
or out, after the gates were shut, without ringing up the 
porter from his lodge, and having one's name taken as 
being out after hours. At least it was supposed that no 
one could, though we boys soon found that there were 
more ways than one leading to Rome. 

The separate dwelling-houses were named A, B, and C. 



16 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

I was detailed to C House, the old inn itself. Each house 
was again divided into three, with its own house master, 
and its own special colour and badges. Our three were 
at the time "Sharps," "Upcutts," and "Bakers." Our 
particular one occupied the second floor, and was reached 
by great oak staircases, which, if you were smart, you 
could ascend at about six steps at a time. This was often 
a singular desideratum, because until you reached the 
fifth form, according to law you ascended by the less 
direct back stairway. 

Our colours were white and maroon, and our sign a 
bishop's mitre — which eflSgy I still find scribbled all 
over the few book relics which I have retained, and 
which emblem, when borne subsequently on my velvet 
football cap, proved to be the nearest I ever was to ap- 
proach to that dignified insignia. 

My benefactor, on the night of my arrival, having 
done more for me than a new boy could expect of an old 
one, was whirled off in the stream of his returning chums 
long before I had found my resting-place for the night. 
The dormitory to which I at last found myself assigned 
contained no less than twenty-five beds, and seemed to 
me a veritable wilderness. If the coaches which used to 
stop here could have ascended the stairs, it might have 
accommodated several. What useful purpose it could 
have served in those far-off days I never succeeded in 
deciding. The room most nearly hke it which I can recall 
is the old dining-hall of a great manor, into which the 
knights in armour rode on horseback to meals, that be- 
ing far less trouble than removing one's armour, and 
quite as picturesque. More or less amicably I obtained 
possession of a bed in a good location, under a big win- 
dow which looked out over the beautiful gardens below. 
I cannot remember that I experienced any of those heart- 



SCHOOL LIFE 17 

searchings or forebodings which sentiment deplores as 
the inevitable lot of the unprotected innocent. 

One informal battle during the first week with a 
boy possessed of the sanctity of having come up from 
the lower school, and therefore being an "old boy," 
achieved for me more privileges than the actual decision 
perhaps entitled one to enjoy, namely, being left alone. 
I subsequently became known as the "Beast," owing to 
my belligerent nature and the undue copiousness of my 
hair. 

The fact that I was placed in the upper fourth form 
condemned me to do my "prep" in the intolerable bar- 
rack called "Big School" — a veritable bear-garden to 
which about three hundred small boys were relegated to 
study. Order was kept by a master and a few monitors, 
who wandered to and fro from end to end of the building, 
while we were supposed to work. For my part, I never 
tried it, partly because the work came very easy to me, 
while the "repetition" was more readily learned from 
a loose page at odd times like dinner and chapel, and 
partly because, winning a scholarship during the term, 
I was transferred to a building reserved for twenty- 
eight such privileged individuals until they gained the 
further distinction of a place in the house class-room, 
by getting their transfer into the fifth form. 

Besides those who lived in the big quad there were 
several houses outside the gates, known as "Out- 
Houses." The boys there fared a good deal better than 
we who lived in college, and I presume paid more highly 
for it. Our meals were served in "Big Hall," where the 
whole four hundred of us were fed. The meals were ex- 
ceptionally poor; so much so that we boys at the be- 
ginning of term formed what we called brewing com- 
panies — which provided as far as possible breakfasts 



18 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

and suppers for ourselves all term. As a protection 
against early bankruptcy, it was our custom to deposit 
our money with a rotund but popular school official, 
known always by a corruption of his name as "the Slug." 
Every Saturday night he would dole out to you your 
deposit made on return from the hoHdays, divided into 
equal portions by the number of weeks in the term. Once 
one was in the fifth form, brewing became easy, for one 
had a right to a place on the class-room fire for one's 
kettle or saucepan. Till then the space over gas stoves in 
Big School being strictly hmited, the right was only 
acquired "vi et armis." Moreover, most of the fourth 
form boys and the "Shells," a class between them and 
the fifth, if they had to work after evening chapel, had 
to sit behind desks around the house class-room facing 
the centre, in which as a rule the fifth form boys were 
lazily cooking and devouring their suppers. Certain 
parts of those repasts, like sausages, we would import 
ready cooked from the "Tuck Shop," and hence they 
only needed warming up. Breakfast in Big School was 
no comfort to one, and personally I seldom attended it. 
But at dinner and tea one had to appear, and remain till 
the doors were opened again. It was a kind of roll-call; 
and the penalty for being late was fifty lines to be written 
out. As my own habits were never as regular as they 
should have been, whenever I was able to keep ahead, I 
possessed pages of such lines, neatly written out during 
school hours and ready for emergencies. On other occa- 
sions I somewhat shamefacedly recall that I employed 
other boys, who devoted less time to athletics than was 
my wont, to help me out — their only remuneration 
being the "joy of service." 

The great desire of every boy who could hope to do so 
was to excel in athletics. This fact has much to commend 



SCHOOL LIFE 19 

it in such an educational system, for it undoubtedly kept 
its devotees from innumerable worse troubles and dan- 
gers. All athletics were compulsory, unless one had ob- 
tained permanent exemption from the medical oflficer. If 
one was not chosen to play on any team during the after- 
noon, each boy had to go to gymnasium for drill and 
exercises, or to "flannel" and run round the Aylesbury 
Arms, an old public house three quarters of a mile dis- 
tant. Any breach of this law was severely punished by 
the boys themselves. It involved a "fives batting," that 
is, a "birching" carried out with a hardwood fives bat, 
after chapel in the presence of the house. As a breach of 
patriotism, it carried great disgrace with it, and was 
very, very seldom necessary. 

Experience would make me a firm believer in self- 
government — determination is the popular term now, 
I believe. No punishments ever touched the boys one 
tenth part as much as those administered by themselves. 
On one occasion two of the Big School monitors, who 
were themselves notorious far more for their constant 
breaches of school law than for their observance of it, 
decided to make capital at the expense of the sixth form. 
One day, just as the dinner-bell rang, they locked the 
sixth form door, while a conclave was being held inside. 
Though everyone was intended to know to whom the 
credit belonged, it was understood that no one would 
dream of giving evidence against them. But it so 
happened that their voices had been recognized from 
within by one of the sixth form boys — and "bullies" 
and unpopular though the culprits were, they would n't 
deny their guilt. Their condign punishment was to be 
"fives -batted" publicly in Big School — in which, how- 
ever, they regained very considerable popularity by the 
way they took a "spanking" without turning a hair. 



20 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

though it cost no less than a dozen bats before it was 
over. 

The publicity of Big School was the only redemption 
of such a bear-garden, but that was a good feature. It 
served to make us toe the line. After ten, it was the cus- 
tom to have what we called "Upper School Boxing." A 
big ring was formed, boxing-gloves provided, and any 
differences which one might have to settle could be ar- 
ranged there. There was more energy than science about 
the few occasions on which I appeared personally in the 
ring, but it was an excellent safety-valve and quite an 
evolutionary experience. 

The exigency of having to play our games immediately 
after noon dinner had naturally taught the boys at the 
head of athletic affairs that it was not wise to eat too 
much. Dinner was the one solid meal which the college 
provided, and most of us wanted it badly enough when 
it came along, especially the suet puddings which went 
by the name of "bollies " and were particularly satisfying. 
But whenever any game of importance was scheduled, a 
remorseless card used to be passed round the table just 
after the meat stage, bearing the ominous legend "No 
bolly to-day." To make sure that there were no truants, 
all hands were forced to "Hooverize." Oddly enough, 
beer in large blue china jugs was freely ser^^ed at every 
dinner. We called it "surpes," and boys, however small, 
helped themselves to as much as they liked. Moreover, 
as soon as the game was over, all who had their house 
colours might come in and get "surpes" served to them 
freely through the buttery window. Both practices, I 
believe, have long since fortunately fallen into desuetude. 

To encourage the budding athlete there was an ex- 
cellent custom of classifying not only the players who 
attained the first team; but beyond them there were "the 



SCHOOL LIFE 21 

Forty" who wore velvet caps with tassels, "the Sixty" 
who wore velvet caps with silver braid, "the Eighty," 
and even "the Hundred" — all of whom were posted 
from time to time, and so stimulated their members to 
try for the next grade. 

Like every other school there were bounds beyond 
which one might not go, and therefore beyond which one 
always wanted to go. Compulsory games Umited the 
temptation in that direction very considerably; and my 
own breaches were practically always to get an extra 
swim. We had an excellent open-air swimming pool, 
made out of a branch of the river Kenneth, and were 
allowed one bathe a day, besides the dip before morning 
chapel, which only the few took, and which did not 
count as a bathe. The punishment for breaking the rule 
was severe, involving a week off for a first offence. But 
one was not easily caught, for even a sixth-former found 
hundreds of naked boys very much aKke in the water, 
and the fact of any one having transgressed the limit 
was very hard to detect. Nor were we bound to incrim- 
inate ourselves by replying to leading questions. 

"Late for Gates" was a more serious crime, involving 
detention from beloved games — and many were the 
expedients to which we resorted to avoid such an un- 
toward contingency. I remember well waiting for an 
hour outside the porter's view, hoping for some delivery 
wagon to give me a chance to get inside. For it was far 
too light to venture to chmb the lofty railings before 
"prep" time. Good fortune ordained, however, that a 
four-wheel cab should come along in time, containing 
the parents of a "hopeful" in the sick-room. It seemed a 
desperate venture, for to "run" the gate was a worse 
offence than being late and owning up. But we succeeded 
by standing on the off step, unquestioned by the person 



22 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

inside, who guessed at once what the trouble was, and 
who proved to be sport enough to engage the porter 
while we got clear. Later on a scapegrace who had more 
reason to require some by-way than myself, revealed to 
me a way which involved a long detour and a climb over 
the laundry roof. Of this, on another occasion, I was 
sincerely glad to avail myself. One of the older boys, I 
remember, made a much bolder venture. He waited till 
dusk, and then boldly walked in through the masters' 
garden. As luck would have it, he met our form master, 
whom we will call Jones, walking the other way. It so 
happened he possessed a voice which he knew was much 
like that of another master, so simply sprinting a little 
he called out, "Night, night, Jones," and got by without 
discovery. 

Our chapel in those days was not a thing of beauty; but 
since then it has been rebuilt (out of our stomachs, the 
boys used to say) and is a model work of art. Attendance 
at chapel was compulsory, and no "cuts" were allowed. 
Moreover, once late, you were given lines, besides losing 
your chapel half-holiday. So the extraordinary zeal ex- 
hibited to be marked off as present should not be attri- 
buted to religious fervour. The chapel was entered from 
quad by two iron gates, with the same lofty railings 
which guarded the entrance on each side. The bell tolled 
for five minutes, then was silent one minute, and then a 
single toll was given, called "stroke." At that instant the 
two masters who stood by the pillars guarding each gate, 
jumped across, closing the gates if they could, and every 
one outside was late. Those inside the open walk — the 
length of the chapel that led to the doors at the far end — 
then continued to march in. ^ ' 

During prayers each form master sat opposite his form, 
all of which faced the central aisle, and marked off those 



SCHOOL LIFE 23 

present. Almost every morning half-dressed boys, with 
shirts open and collars mibuttoned, boots unlaced, and 
jumping into coats and waistcoats as they dashed along, 
could be seen rushing towards the gate during the omi- 
nous minute of silence. There was always time to get 
straight before the mass of boys inside had emptied into 
chapel; and I never remember a gate master stopping a 
boy before "stroke" for insufficiency of coverings. Many 
were the subterfuges employed to get excused, and natu- 
rally some form masters were themselves less regular than 
others, though you never could absolutely count on any 
particular one being absent. Twice in my time gates were 
rushed — that is, when "stroke" went such crowds of 
flying boys were just at the gate that the masters were 
unable to stop the onslaught, and were themselves 
brushed aside or knocked down under the seething mass 
of panic-stricken would-be worshippers. On one of these 
occasions we were forgiven — "stroke" was ten seconds 
early; on the other a half -holiday was stopped, as one of 
the masters had been injured. To trip one's self up, and 
get a bloody nose, and possibly a face scratched on the 
gravel, and then a "sick cut" from the kindly old school 
doctor, was one of the more common ways boys discov- 
ered of saving their chapel half — when it was a very 
close call. 

The school surgery was presided over in my day by a 
much-beloved old physician of the old school, named 
Fergus, which the boys had so long ago corrupted into 
"Fungi" that many a lad was caught mistakenly ad- 
dressing the old gentleman as Dr. Fungi — an error I 
always fancied to be rather appreciated. 

By going to surgery you could very frequently escape 
evening chapel — a very desirable event if you had a 
"big brew" coming ofif in class-room, for you could get 



U A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

things cooked and have plenty of room on the fire before 
the others were out. But one always had to pay for the 
advantage, the old doctor being very much addicted to 
potions. I never shall forget the horrible tap in the corner, 
out of which "cough mixture" flowed as "a healing for 
the nations," but which, nasty as it was, was the cheapest 
price at which one could purchase the cut. Some boys, 
anxious to cut lessons, found that by putting a little soap 
in one's eye, that organ would become red and watery. 
This they practised so successfully that sometimes for 
weeks they would be forbidden to do lessons on account 
of " eye-strain." They had to use lotions, eye-shades, and 
every spectacle possible was tried, but all to no avail. 
Sometimes they used so much soap that I was sure the 
doctor would suspect the bubbles. 

I had two periods in sick-room with a worrying cough, 
where the time, was always made so pleasant that one 
was not tempted to hasten recovery. Diagnosis, more- 
over, was not so accurate in those days as it might have 
been, and the dear old doctor took no risks. So at the 
age of sixteen I was sent off for a winter to the South of 
France, with the diagnosis of congestion of the lungs. 

One of my aunts, a Miss Hutchinson, living at Hyeres 
in the South of France, was delighted to receive me. With 
a widowed friend and two charming and athletic daugh- 
ters, she had a very pretty villa on the hills overlooking 
the sea. My orders — to live out of doors — were very 
literally obeyed. In light flannel costumes we roamed the 
hills after moths and butterflies, early and late. We kept 
the frogs in miniature ponds in boxes covered with net- 
ting, providing them with bamboo ladders to climb, and 
so tell us when it was going to be wet weather. We had 
also enclosures in which we kept banks of trap-door 
spiders, which used to afford us intense interest with 



SCHOOL LIFE 25 

their clever artifices. To these we added the breeding of 
the more beautiful butterflies and moths, and so, with- 
out knowing that we were learning, we were taught many 
and valuable truths of life. There were horses to ride 
also, and a beautiful "plage" to bathe upon. It was al- 
ways sunny and warm, and I invariably look back on 
that winter as spent in paradise. I was permitted to go 
over with a young friend to the Carnival at Nice, where, 
disguised as a clown, and then as a priest, with the 
abandon of boys, we enjoyed every moment of the time — 
the world was so big and wonderful. The French that I 
had very quickly learned, as we always spoke it at our 
villa, stood me on this occasion in good stead. But better 
still, I happened, when climbing into one of the flower- 
bedecked carriages parading in the "bataille de fleurs" 
— which, being in costume, was quite the right thing to 
do — to find that the owner was an old friend of my 
family, one Sir William Hut. He at once carried me to 
his home for the rest of the Carnival, and, of course, 
made it doubly enjoyable. 

A beautiful expedition, made later in that region, 
which lives in my memory, was to the gardens at La 
Mortola, over the ItaKan line, made famous by the fre- 
quent visits of Queen Victoria to them. They were 
owned by Sir Thomas Hanbury, whose wife was my 
aunt's great friend. 

The quaintness of the memories which persist longest 
in one's mind often amuse me. We used, as good Episco- 
paUans, to go every Sunday to the little English Church 
on the rue des Palmiers. Alas, I can remember only one 
thing about those services. The clergyman had a pe- 
culiar impediment in his speech which made him say his 
h's and s's, both as sh. Thus he always said s^uman for 
^uman, and invariably prayed that God might be pleased 



26 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

to "shave the Queen." He nearly got me into trouble 
once or twice through it. 

About the middle of the winter I reahzed that I had 
made a mistake. In writing home I had so enthusiastically 
assured my father that the place was suiting my health, 
that he wrote back that he thought in that case I might 
stand a Uttle tutoring, and forthwith I was despatched 
every morning to a Mr. B., an Enghshman, whose house, 
called the "Hermitage," was in a thick wood. I soon dis- 
covered that Mr. B. was obliged to live abroad for his 
health, and that the coaching of small boys was only a 
means to that end. He was a good instructor in mathema- 
tics, a study which I always loved, but he insisted on my 
taking Latin and French literature, for neither of which 
I had the slightest taste. I consequently made no effort 
whatever to improve my mind, a fact which did not 
in the least disturb his equanimity. The great interest 
of those journeys to the Hermitage were the' fables of 
La Fontaine — which I learned as repetition and en- 
joyed — and the enormous number of lizards on the walls, 
which could disappear with lightning rapidity when seen, 
though they would stay almost motionless, waiting for 
a fly to come near, which they then swallowed alive. 
They were so like the stones one could almost rub one's 
nose against them without seeing them. Each time I 
started, I used to cut a little switch for myself and try to 
switch them off their ledges before they vanished. The • 
attraction to the act lay in that it was almost impos- 
sible to accomplish. But if you did they scored a bull's- 
eye by incontinently discarding their tails, which made 
them much harder to catch next time, and seemed in no 
way to incommode them, though it served to excuse my 
conscience of cruelty. At the same time I have no wish 
to pose as a protector of flies. 



SCHOOL LIFE 27 

Returning to Marlborough School the following sum- 
mer, I found that my father, who knew perfectly the 
thorough groundwork I had received in Greek and Latin, 
had insisted on my being given a remove into the lower 
fifth form "in absentia." Both he and I were aware that 
I could do the work easily; but the form master resented 
it, and had already protested in vain. I believe he was 
a very good man in his way, and much hked by those 
whom he hked. But alas, I was not one of them; and 
never once, during the whole time I was in his form, did 
I get one single word of encouragement out of him. My 
mathematical master, and "stinks," or chemical master, 
I was very fond of, and in both those departments I 
made good progress. 

The task of keeping order in a chemistry class of boys 
is never easy. The necessary experiments divert the 
master's eye from the class, and always give opportunity 
for fooling. Added to this was the fact that our "stinks" 
master, like many scientific teachers, was far too good- 
natured, and half-enjoyed himself the diversion which 
his experiments gave. When obliged to punish a boy 
caught "flagrante delicto," he invariably looked out for 
some way to make it up to him later. It was the odd way 
he did it which endeared him to us, as if apologizing for 
the kindness. Thus, on one occasion, suddenly in most 
righteous anger, just as if a parenthesis to the remark he 
was making, he interposed, "Come and be caned, boy. 
My study, twelve o'clock." When the boy was leaving, 
very unrepentant after keeping the appointment, in 
the same parenthetical way the master remarked, "Go 
away, boy. Cake and wine, my room, five o'clock" — 
which proved eventually the most effective part of the 
correction. 

To children there always appears a gap between them 



28 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

and "grown-ups" as impassable as that which Abraham 
is made to describe as so great that they who would pass 
to and fro cannot. As we grow older, we cease to see it, 
but it exists all the same. As I write, five children are 
romping through this old wood on broom-handle horses. 
One has just fallen. A girl of twelve at once retorts, "Do 
get up, Willy, your horse is always throwing you off." 
The joys of life lie in us, not in things; and in childhood 
imagination is so big, its joys so entirely uncloyed. 
Sometimes grown-ups are apt to grudge the time and 
trouble put into apparently transient pleasures. A trivial 
strawberry feast, given to children on our dear old lawn 
under the jasmine and rose-bushes, something after the 
order of a New England clam-bake, still looms as a 
happy memory of my parents' love for children, punctu- 
ated by the fact that though by continuing a game in 
spite of warning I broke a window early in the afternoon, 
and was banished to the nursery "as advised," my father 
forgave me an hour later, and himself fetched me down 
again to the party. .v^>'^' - ; f- 

To teach us independence, my father put us on an 
allowance at a very early age, with a small bank account, 
to which every birthday he added five pounds on our 
behalf. We had no pony at that time, indeed had not 
yet learned to ride, so our deposits always went by the 
name of "pony money." This was an excellent plan, for 
we did n't yet value money for itself, and were better 
able to appreciate the joy of giving because it seemed 
to postpone the advent of our pony. However, when we 
were thought to have learned to value so sentient a com- 
panion and to be likely to treat him properly, a Good 
Samaritan was permitted to present us with one of our 
most cherished friends. To us, she was an unparalleled 
beauty. How many times we fell over her head, and over 



SCHOOL LIFE 29 

her tail, no one can record. She always waited for you to 
remount, so it did n't much matter; and we were taught 
that great lesson in life, not to be afraid of falling, but to 
learn how to take a fall. My own bent, however, was 
never for the things of the land, and though gallops on 
the Dee Sands, and races with our cousins, who owned 
a broncho and generally beat us, had their fascination, 
boats were the things which appealed most to me. 

Having funds at our disposal, we were allowed to pur- 
chase material, and under the supervision of a local car- 
penter, to build a boat ourselves. To this purpose our 
old back nursery was forthwith allocated. The craft 
which we desired was a canoe that would enable us to 
paddle or drift along the deep channels of the river, and 
allow us to steal upon the flocks of birds feeding at the 
edges. Often in memory I enjoy those days again — the 
planning, the modelling, the fitting, the setting-up, and 
at last, the visit of inspection of our parents. Alas,' stiff- 
necked in our generation, we had insisted on straight 
lines and a square stern. Never shall I forget the indig- 
nation aroused in me by a cousin's remark, "It looks 
awful like a coflBn." The resemblance had not previously 
struck either of us, and father had felt that the joke was 
too dangerous a one to make, and had said nothing. But 
the pathos of it was that we now saw it all too clearly. 
My brother explained that the barque was intended to 
be not "seen." Ugliness was almost desirable. It might 
help us if we called it the "Reptile," and painted it red — 
all of which suggestions were followed. But still I remem- 
ber feeling a little crestfallen, when after launching it 
through the window, it lay offensively resplendent against 
the vivid green of the grass. It served, however, for a 
time, ending its days honourably by capsizing a friend 
and me, guns and all, into the half-frozen water of the 



so A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

lower estuary while we were stalking some curlew. I had 
to run home dripping. My friend's gun, moreover, hav- 
ing been surreptitiously borrowed from my cousin's 
father, was recovered the following day, to our unutter- 
able relief. Out of the balance of the money spent on the 
boat, we purchased a pin-fire, breech-loading gun, the 
pride of my hfe for many days. I was being kept back 
from school at the time on account of a cold, but I was 
not surprised to find myself next day sitting in a train, 
bound for Marlborough, and "referred once more to my 
studies." :- ^'- * 

A little later my father, not being satisfied, took me 
away to read with a tutor for the London matriculation, 
in which without any trouble, I received a first class. 

A large boarding-school in England is Hke a miniature 
world. One makes many acquaintances, who change as 
one gets pushed into new classes, so at that stage one 
makes few lasting friends. Those who remain till they 
attain the sixth form, and make the school teams, prob- 
ably form more permanent friendships. I at least think 
of that period as one when one's bristles were generally 
up, and though many happy memories finger, and I have 
found that to be an old Marlburian is a bond of friend- 
ship all the world over, it is the fittle oddities which one 
remembers best. 

A new scholarship boy had one day been assigned to 
the closed corporation of our particular class-room. To 
me he had many attractions, for he was a genius both in 
mathematics and chemistry. We used to love talking 
over the problems that were set us as voluntary tasks 
for our spare time; and our united excursions in those 
directions were so successful that we earned our class 
more than one "hour off," as rewards for the required 
number of stars given for good pieces of work. My friend 



SCHOOL LIFE SI 

had, however, no use whatever for athletics. He had 
never been from home before, had no brothers, and five 
sisters, was the pet of his parents, and naturally some- 
what of a square plug in a round hole in our school life. 
He hated all conventions, and was always in trouble 
with the boys, for he entirely neglected his personal ap- 
pearance, while his fingers were always discoloured with 
chemicals, and he would not even feign an interest in the 
things for which they cared. I can remember him sitting 
on the foot of my bed, talking me to sleep more than 
once with some new plan he had devised for a self -steer- 
ing torpedo or an absolutely reliable flying machine. He 
had received the sobriquet of "Mad G.," and there was 
some justice in it from the opposition point of view. I 
had not realized, however, that he was being bullied — 
on such a subject he would never say a syllable — till 
one day as he left class-room I saw a large lump of coal 
hit him square on the head, and a rush of blood follow it 
that made me hustle him off to surgery. Scalp wounds 
are not so dangerous as they are bloody to heads as thick 
as ours. His explanation that he had fallen down was too 
obvious a distortion of truth to deceive even our kindly 
old doctor. But he asked no further question, seeing that 
it was a point of honour. The matter, however, forced an 
estrangement between myself and some of my fellows 
that I realized afterwards was excellent for me. Forthwith 
we moved my friend's desk into my comer of the room 
which was always safe when I was around, though later 
some practices of the others to which I took exception 
led to a combination which I thought of then as that 
made by the Jews to catch Paul, and which I foiled in a 
similar way, watchfully eluding them when they were in 
numbers together, but always ready to meet one or two 
at a time. The fact that I had just taken up "racquets" 



32 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

impressed it on my memory, for considering the class- 
room temporarily misafe for "prep" work, I used that 
building as a convenient refuge for necessary study. It 
would have been far better to have fought it out and 
taken, if unavoidable, whatever came to me — had it 
been anywhere else I should probably have done so. But 
the class-room was a close corporation for Foundation 
scholars, and not one of my chums had access to it to see 
fair play. 

My friendship for "Mad G." was largely tempered by 
my own love for anything athletic, and eccentricities 
paid a very heavy price among all boys. Thus, though I 
was glad to lend my protection to my friend, we never 
went about together — as such boys as he always Hved 
the hfe of hermits in the midst of the crowd. I well re- 
member one other boy, made eccentric by his peculiar 
face and an unfortunate impediment of speech. No such 
boy should have been sent to an English public school 
as it was in my day. His stutter was no ordinary one, for 
it consisted, not in repeating the first letter or syllable, 
but in blowing out both cheeks like a balloon, and mak- 
ing noises which resembled a back-firing motor engine. 
It was the custom of our form master to make us say 
our repetition by each boy taking one line, the last round 
being always "expressed" — that is, unless you started 
instantly the boy above you finished, the next boy be- 
gan, and took your place. I can still see and hear the un- 
fortunate J. getting up steam for his line four or five 
boys ahead of time, so that he might explode at the right 
moment, which desirable end, however, he but very 
rarely accomplished, and never catching up, he used, 
like the man in the parable, always to "begin with shame 
to take the lowest place." Sometimes the master in a 
merciful mood allowed us to write the line; but that was 



SCHOOL LIFE 83 

risky, for it was considered no disgrace to circumvent 
him, and under those circumstances it was very easy for 
the next boy to write his own and then yours, and pass 
it along if he saw you were in trouble. 

There was, and I think with some reason, a pride 
among the boys on their appearance on certain occasions. 
It went by the name of "good form." Thus on Sundays 
at morning chapel, we always wore a button-hole flower 
if we could. My dear mother used to post me along a 
Httle box of flowers every week — nor was it by any 
means wasted energy, for not only did the love for 
flowers become a hobby and a custom with many of us 
through life, and a help to steer clear of sloppiness in 
appearance, but it was a habit quite likely to spread to 
the soul. But beyond that, the picture of my dear mother, 
with the thousand worries of a large school of small 
boys on her hands, finding time to gather, pack, address, 
and post each week with her own hands so fleeting and 
inessential a token of her love, has a thousand times 
arisen to my memory, and led me to consider some ap- 
parently quite unnecessary little labour of love as being 
well worth the time and trouble. It is these deeds of love 
— not words, however touching — that never fade from 
the soul, and to the last make their appeal to the wander- 
ing boy to "arise" and do things. 

Like everything else this fastidiousness can be over- 
done, and I remember once a boy's legal guardian show- 
ing me a bill for a hundred pounds sterling that his ward 
had incurred in a single term for cut flowers. Yet "form" 
is a part of the life of all English schools, and the boys 
think much more of it than sin. At Harrow you may not 
walk in the middle of the road as a freshman; and in 
American schools and universities, such regulations as 
the "Fence" laws at Yale show that they have emulated 



34 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

and even 'surpassed us in these. It was, however, a very 
potent influence, and we were always ridiculously sensi- 
tive about breaches of it. Thus, on a certain prize day 
my friend "Mad G.>" having singularly distinguished 
himself in his studies, his parents came all the way from 
their home, at great expense to themselves, to see their 
beloved and only son honoured. I presume that, though 
wild horses would not drag anything out of the boy at 
school, he had communicated to them the details of 
some little service rendered. For to my horror I was 
stopped by his mother, whom I subsequently learned to 
love and honour above most people, and actually kissed 
while walking in the open quad — strutting like a pea- 
cock, I suppose, for I remember feeling as if the bottom 
had suddenly fallen out of the earth. The sequel, how- 
ever, was an invitation to visit their home in North 
Wales for the Christmas holidays, where there was rough 
shooting, — the only kind I really cared for, -r- boating, 
rock-climbing, bathing, and the companionship of as 
Hvely a family as it was possible to meet anywhere. 
Many a holiday afterwards we shared together, and the 
kindness showered upon me I shall never be able to for- 
get, or, alas, return; for my dear friend "Mad G." has 
long ago gone to his rest, and so have both his parents, 
whom I loved almost as my own. 

, Another thing for which I have much to thank my 
parents is the interest which they encouraged me to take 
in the collecting and study of natural objects. We were 
taught that the only excuse that made the taking of 
animal life honourable was for some useful purpose, like 
food or study or self-preservation. Several cases of birds 
stuffed and set up when we were fourteen and sixteen 
years of age still adorn the old house. Every bit had to 
be done by ourselves, my brother making the cases, and 



SCHOOL LIFE 35 

I the rock work and taxidermy. The hammering-up of 
sandstone and granite; to cover the glue-soaked brown 
paper that we moulded into rocks, satisfied my keenest 
instinct for making messes, and only the patience of the 
old-time domestics would have "stood for- it." My 
brother speciaHzed in birds' eggs, and I m butterflies and 
moths. Later we added seaweeds, shells, and flowers. 
Some of our collections have been dissipated; and though 
we have not a really scientific acquaintance with either 
of these kingdoms, we acquired a "hail-fellow-well-met" 
familiarity with all of them, which has enlivened many 
a day in many parts of the world as we have journeyed 
through life. Moreover, though purchased pictures have 
other values, the old cases set on the walls of one's den 
bring back memories that are the joy and solace of many 
idle moments later in Kfe — each rarer egg, each extra 
butterfly picturing some day or place of keen triumph, 
otherwise long since forgotten. Here, for instance, is a 
convolvulus hawk father found killed on a mountain in 
Switzerland; there an Apollo I caught in the Pyrenees; 
here a "red burret" with "five eyes" captured as we 
raced through the bracken on CHfton Downs; and there 
are "purple emperors" wired down to "meat" baits on 
the Surrey Downs. * 

Many a night at school have I stolen into the great 
forest, my butterfly net under my coat, to try and add 
a new specimen to my hoard. We were always supplied 
with good "key-books," so that we should be able to 
identify our specimens, and also to search for others 
more intelligently. One value of my own specialty was 
that for the moths it demanded going out in the night, 
and the thrills of out of doors in the beautiful summer 
evenings, when others were "fugging" in the house or 
had gone to bed, used actually to make me dance around 



36 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

on the grass. The dark lantern, the sugaring of the tree 
stems with intoxicating potions, and the subsequent ex- 
citement of searching for specimens, fascinated me ut- 
terly. Our breeding from the egg, through the cater- 
pillar stage, taught us many things without our knowing 
that we were learning. 

One of our holidays was memorable, because as soon 
as our parents left we invited my friend and two sisters 
as well to come and stay with us. They came, fully ex- 
pecting that mother had asked them, but were good 
enough sports to stay when they found it was only us 
two boys. They greatly added to the enjoyment of the 
days, and if they had not been such inveterate home 
letter- writers — a habit of which we were very con- 
temptuous — it would have saved us boys much good- 
humoured teasing afterwards, for the matron would 
have been mum and no one the wiser. 



CHAPTER III 

EAELY WORK IN LONDON 

In 1883 my father became anxious to give up teaching 
boys and to confine himself more exclusively to the work 
of a clergyman. With this in view he contemplated mov- 
ing to London where he had been offered the chaplaincy 
of the huge London Hospital. I remember his talking 
it over with me, and then asking if I had any idea 
what I wanted to do in life. It came to me as a new conun- 
drum. It had never occurred to me to look forward 
to a profession; except that I knew that the heads of 
tigers, deer, and all sorts of trophies of the chase which 
adorned our house came from soldier uncles and others 
who hunted them in India, and I had always thought 
that their occupation would suit my taste admirably. It 
never dawned on me that I would have to earn my bread 
and butter — that had always come along. Moreover, I 
had never seen real poverty in others, for all the fisher- 
folk in our village seemed to have enough. I hated dress 
and frills, and envied no one. At school, and on the Ri- 
viera, and even in Wales, I had never noticed any want. 
It is true that a number of dear old ladies from the village 
came in the winter months to our house once or twice a 
week to get soup. They used to sit in the back hall, each 
with a round tin can with a bucket handle. These were 
filled with hot broth, and the old ladies were given a 
repast as well before leaving. As a matter of fact I very 
seldom actually saw them, for that part of the house 
was cut off entirely by large double green-baize covered 
doors. But I often knew that they must have been there, 
because our Skye terrier, though fed to overflowing. 



S8 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

usually attended these seances, and I presume, while 
the old ladies were occupied with lunch, sampled the 
cans of soup that stood in rows along the floor. He used 
to come along with dripping whiskers which betrayed 
his excursion, and the look of a connoisseur in his large 
round eyes — as if he were certifying that justice had 
been done once more in the kitchen. 

While I was in France the mother of my best chum in 
school had been passing through Marseilles on her way 
home from India, and had most kindly taken me on a 
jolly trip to Aries, Avignon, and other historical places. 
She was the wife of a famous missionary in India. She 
spoke eight languages fluently, including Arabic, and 
was a perfect "vade mecum" of interesting information 
which she well knew how to impart. She had known my 
mother's family all her Hfe, they being Anglo-Indians in 
the army service. 

About the time of my father's question, my friend's 
mother was staying in Chester with her brother-in-law, 
the Lieutenant-Governor of Denbighshire. It was decided 
that as she was a citizeness of the world, no one could 
suggest better for what profession my peculiar talents 
fitted me. The interview I have long ago forgotten, but 
I recall coming home with a confused idea that tiger 
hunting would not support me, and that she thought I 
ought to become a clergyman, though it had no attrac- 
tion for me, and I decided against it. 

None of our family on either side, so far as I can find 
out, had ever practised medicine. My own experience of 
doctors had been rather a chequered one, but at my 
father's suggestion I gladly went up and discussed the 
matter with our country family doctor. He was a fine 
man, and we boys were very fond of him and his family, 
his daughter being our best girl friend near by. He had 



EARLY WORK IN LONDON 39 

an enormous practice, in which he was eminently suc- 
cessful. The number of horses he kept, and the miles he 
covered with them, were phenomenal in my mind. He 
had always a kind word for every one, and never gave 
us boys away, though he must have known many of our 
pranks played in our parents' absence. The only remain- 
ing memory of that visit was that the old doctor brought 
down from one of his shelves a large jar, out of which he 
produced a pickled human brain. I was thrilled with en- 
tirely new emotions. I had never thought of man's body 
as a machine. That this weird, white, puckered-up mass 
could be the producer or transmitter of all that made 
man, that it controlled our physical strength and growth, 
and oiu' responses to hfe, that it made one into "Mad G.'* 
and another into me — why, it was absolutely marvel- 
lous. It attracted me as did the gramophone, the camera, 
the automobile. 

My father saw at once on my return that I had found 
my real interest, and put before me two alternative plans, 
one to go to Oxford, where my brother had just entered, 
or to join him in London and take up work in the Lon- 
don Hospital and University, preparatory to going in for 
medicine. I chose the latter at once — a decision I have 
never regretted. I ought to say that business as a career 
was not suggested. In England, especially in those days, 
these things were more or less hereditary. My forbears 
were all fighters or educators, except for an occasional 
statesman or banker. Probably there is some advantage 
in this plan. 

The school had been leased for a period of seven years 
to a very delightful successor, it being rightly supposed 
that after that time my brother would wish to assume 
the responsibiUty. 

Some of the subjects for the London matriculation 



40 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

were quite new to me, especially "English." But with 
the fresh incentive and new vision of responsibility I set 
to work with a will, and soon had mastered the ten re- 
quired subjects sufficiently to pass the examination with 
credit. But I must say here that Professor Huxley's criti- 
cisms of English public school teaching of that period 
were none too stringent. I wish with all my heart that 
others had spoken out as bravely, for in those days that 
wonderful man was held up to our scorn as an atheist and 
iconoclast. He was, however, perfectly right. We spent 
years of life and heaps of money on our education, and 
came out knowing nothing to fit us for life, except that 
which we picked up incidentally. 

I now followed my father to London, and found every 
subject except my chemistry entirely new. I was not 
familiar with one word of botany, zoology, physics, phys- 
iology, or: comparative anatomy. About the universe 
which I inhabited I knew as Uttle as I did about cunei- 
form writings. Except for my mathematics and a mere 
modicum of chemistry I had nothing on which to base 
my new work; and students coming from Government 
free schools, or almost anywhere, had a great advantage 
over men of my previous education; I did not even know 
how to study wisely. Again, as Huxley showed, medical 
education in London was so divided, there being no 
teaching university, that the curriculum was ridiculously 
inadequate. There were still being foisted upon the world 
far too many medical men of the type of Bob Sawyer. 

There were fourteen hospitals in London to which 
medical schools were attached. Our hospital was the 
largest in the British Isles, and in the midst of the poor- 
est population in England, being located in the famous 
Whitechapel Road, and surrounded by all the purlieus 
of the East End of the great city. Patients came from 



EARLY WORK IN LONDON 41 

Tilbury Docks to Billingsgate Market, and all the river 
haimts between; from Shad well, Deptford, Wapping, 
Poplar, from Petticoat Lane and Radcliffe Highway, 
made famous by crime and by Charles Dickens. They 
came from Bethnal Green, where once queens had their 
courts, now the squalid and crowded home of poverty; 
from Stratford and Bow, and a hundred other slums. 

The hospital had some nine hundred beds, which were 
always so full that the last surgeon admitting to his 
wards constantly found himself with extra beds poked 
in between the regulation number through sheer neces- 
sity. It afforded an unrivalled field for clinical experience 
and practical teaching. In my day, however, owing to its 
position in London, and the fact that its school was only 
just emerging from primeval chaos, it attracted very few 
indeed of the medical students from Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, who are obliged to come to London for their last 
two or three years' hospital work — the scope in those 
small university towns being decidedly hmited. 

Looking back I am grateful to my alma mater, and 
have that real affection for her that every loyal son 
should have. But even that does not conceal from me 
how poor a teaching establishment it was. Those who 
had natural genius, and the advantages of previous 
scientific training, who were sons of medical men, or 
had served apprenticeships to them, need not have suf- 
fered so much through its utter ineflBciency. But men 
in my position suffered quite unconsciously a terrible 
handicap, and it was only the influences for which I had 
nothing whatever to thank the hospital that saved me 
from the catastrophes which overtook so many who 
started with me. 

To begin with, there was no supervision of our lives 
whatever. We were flimg into a coarse and evil environ- 



42 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

ment, among men who too often took pride in their 
shame, just to sink or swim. Not one soul eared which you 
did. I can still remember numerous cases where it simply 
meant that men paid quite large sums for the privilege 
of sending the sons they loved direct to the devil. I 
recall one lad whom I had known at school. His father 
lavished money upon him, and sincerely believed that 
his son was doing him credit and would soon return to 
share his large practice, and bring to it all the many 
new advances he had learned. The reports of examin- 
ations successfully passed he fully accepted; and the 
non-return of his son at vacation times he put down to 
professional zeal. It was not till the time came for the 
boy to get his degree and return that the father discov- 
ered that he had Hved exactly the life of the prodigal 
in the parable, and had neither attended college nor at- 
tempted a single examination of any kind whatever. It 
broke the father's heart and he died. 

Examinations for degrees were held by the London 
University, or the Royal College of Physicians and Sur- 
geons, never by the hospital schools. These were practi- 
cally race committees; they did no teaching, but when 
you had done certain things, they allowed you to come 
up and be examined, and if you got through a written 
and "viva voce" examination you were inflicted on an 
unsuspecting public "qualified to kill" — often only too 
literally so. 

It is obvious on the face of it that this could be no 
proper criterion for so important a decision as to qualifi- 
cations; special crammers studied the examiners, their 
questions, and their teachings, and luck had a great deal 
to do with success. While some men never did them- 
selves justice in examinations, others were exactly the 
reverse. Thus I can remember one resident accoucheur 



EARLY WORK IN LONDON 43 

being "ploughed," as we called it, in his special subject, 
obstetrics — and men to whom you would n't trust your 
cat getting through with flying colours. 

Of the things to be done: First you had to be signed 
up for attending courses of lectures on certain subjects. 
This was simply a matter of tipping the beadle, who 
marked you off. I personally attended only two botany 
lectures during the whole course. At the first some prac- 
tical joker had spilled a solution of carbon bisulphide all 
over the professor's platform, and the smell was so in- 
tolerable that the lecture was prorogued. At the second, 
some wag let loose a couple of pigeons, whereupon every 
one started either to capture them or stir them up with 
pea-shooters. The professor said, " Gentlemen, if you do 
not wish to learn, you are at liberty to leave." The entire 
class walked out. The insignificant sum of two and six- 
pence secured me my sign-up for the remainder of the 
course. 

Materia medica was almost identical; and while we 
had better fortune with physiology, no experience and no 
apparatus for verifying its teachings were ever shown us. 

Our chemistry professor was a very clever man, but 
extremely eccentric, and his class was pandemonium. I 
have seen him so frequently pelted with peas, when his 
head was turned, as to force him to leave the amphi- 
theatre in despair. I well remember also an unpopular 
student being pushed down from the top row almost on 
to the experiment table. 

There was practically no histology taught, and little 
or no pathology. Almost every bit of the microscope 
which I did was learned on my own instrument at home. 
Anatomy, however, we were well taught in the dissect- 
ing-room, where we could easily obtain all the work we 
needed. But not till Sir Frederick Treves became our 



44 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

lecturer in anatomy and surgery was it worth while do- 
ing more than pay the necessary sum to get signed up. 

In the second place we had to attend in the dispensary, 
actually to handle drugs and learn about them — an 
admirable rule. Personally I went once, fooled around 
making egg-nogg, and arranged with a considerate 'drug- 
gist to do the rest that was necessary. Yet I satisfied the 
examiners at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, 
those of the London University at the examinations for 
Bachelor of Medicine — the only ones which they gave 
which carried questions in any of these subjects. 

In the athletic Hfe of the University, however, I took 
great interest, and was secretary in succession of the 
cricket, football, and rowing clubs. I helped remove the 
latter from the old river Lea to the Thames, to raise the 
inter-hospital rowing championship and start the united 
hospitals' rowing club. I found time to row in the inter- 
hospital race for two years and to play on the. football 
team in the two years of which we won the inter- 
hospital football cup. A few times I played with the 
united hospitals' team; but I found that their ways were 
not mine, as I had been taught to despise alcohol as a 
beverage and to respect all kinds of womanhood. For 
three years I played regularly for Richmond — the best 
of the London clubs at the time — and subsequently for 
Oxford, being put on the team the only term I was in 
residence. I also threw the hammer for the hospital in 
the united hospitals' sports, winning second place for 
two years. Indeed, athletics in some form occupied 
every moment of my spare time. 

It was in my second year, 1885, that returning from 
an out-patient case one night, I turned into a large tent 
erected in a purlieu of Shadwell, the district to which I 
happened to have been called. It proved to be an evangel- 




« 

H 
O S 

O S 

fa 

^ 2 
2 ? 

P "o 

pq — 

PS 2 

X S 
b o 

P 
Q 

O 

fa 
XI 

o 



EARLY WORK IN LONDON 45 

istic meeting of the then famous Moody and Sankey. It 
was so new to me that when a tedious prayer-bore began 
with a long oration, I started to leave. Suddenly the 
leader, whom I learned afterwards was D. L. Moody, 
called out to the audience, "Let us sing a hymn while 
our brother finishes his prayer." His practicality inter- 
ested me, and I stayed the service out. When eventually 
I left, it was with a determination either to make reli- 
gion a real effort to do as I thought Christ would do in 
my place as a doctor, or frankly abandon it. That could 
only have one issue while I still lived with a mother like 
mine. For she had always been my ideal of unselfish love. 
So I decided to make the attempt, and later went down 
to hear the brothers J. E. and C. T. Studd speak at some 
subsidiary meeting of the Moody campaign. They were 
natural athletes, and I felt that I could listen to them. 
I could not have hstened to a sensuous-looking man, a 
man who was not a master of his own body, any more 
than I could to a precentor, who coming to sing the 
prayers at college chapel dedication, I saw get drunk on 
sherry which he abstracted from the banquet table just 
before the service. Never shall I forget, at the meeting 
of the Studd brothers, the audience being asked to stand 
up if they intended to try and follow Christ. It appeared 
a very sensible question to me, but I was amazed how 
hard I found it to stand up. At last one boy, out of 
a hundred or more in sailor rig, from an industrial or 
reformatory ship on the Thames, suddenly rose. It 
seemed to me such a wonderfully courageous act — for 
I knew perfectly what it would mean to him — that I 
immediately found myself on my feet, and went out 
feeling that I had crossed the Rubicon, and must do 
something to prove it. 

We were Church of England people, and I always at- 



46 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

tended service with my mother at an Episcopal church 
of the evangeHcal type. At her suggestion I asked the 
minister if I could in any way help. He offered me a class 
of small boys in his Sunday School, which I accepted 
with much hesitation. The boys, derived from houses in 
the neighbourhood, were as smart as any I have known. 
With every faculty sharpened by the competition of the 
street, they so tried my patience with their pranks that 
I often wondered what strange attraction induced them 
to come at all. The school and church were the property 
of a society known by the uninviting title of the "Epis- 
copal Society for the promotion of Christianity among 
the Jews." It owned a large court, shut off from the road 
by high gates, around which stood about a dozen houses 
— with the church facing the gates at one end of a pretty 
avenue of trees. It was an oasis in the desert of that 
dismal region. It possessed also an industrial institution 
for helping its converts to make a living, when driven 
out of their own homes; and its main work was carried 
on for the most part by superannuated missionaries. One 
was from Bagdad, I remember, and one from Palestine, 
both themselves Jews by extraction. These missionaries 
were paid such miserable salaries that in their old age 
they were always left very poor. 

One instance of a baptism I have never forgotten. I 
was then living in the court, having hired a nice separate 
house under the trees after my father had died and my 
mother had moved to Hampstead. In such a district the 
house was a Godsend. One Sunday I was strolling in 
the court when the clergyman came rushing out of the 
church and called to me in great excitement, "The 
church is full of Jews. They are going to carry off Abra- 
ham. Can't you go in and help while I fetch the police.f^" 
My friend and I therefore rushed in as directed to a 



EARLY WORK IN LONDON 47 

narrow alleyway between high box pews which led into 
the vestry, into which "Abraham" had been spirited. 
The door being shut and our backs put to it, it was a 
very easy matter to hold back the crowd, who probably 
supposed at first that we were leading the abduction 
party. There being only room for two to come on at once, 
"those behind cried forward, and those in front back," 
till after very little blood spilt, we heard the police in the 
church, and the crowd at once took to flight. I regret to 
say that we expedited the rear-guard by football rather 
than strictly Christian methods. His friends then charged 
Abraham with theft, expecting to get him out of his 
place of refuge and then trap him, as we were told they 
had a previous convert. We therefore accompanied him 
personally through the mean streets, both to and fro, 
spoiling for more fun. But they displayed more discre- 
tion than valour, and to the best of my behef he escaped 
their machinations. 

My Sunday-School efforts did not satisfy me. The 
boys were few, and I failed to see any progress. But I 
had resolved that I would do no work on Sundays except 
for others, so I joined a young Australian of my class 
in hospital in holding services on Sunday nights in half 
a dozen of the underground lodging-houses along the 
Radcliffe Highway. He was a good musician, so he pur- 
chased a fine Httle portable harmonium, and whatever 
else the lodgers thought of us, they always liked the 
music. We used to meet for evening tea at a place in the 
famous Highway known as "The Stranger's Rest," out- 
side of which an open-air service was always held for the 
sailors wandering up and down the docks. At these a 
number of ladies would sing; and after the meetings a 
certain number of the sailors were asked to come in and 
have refreshments. There were always some who had 



48 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

spent their money on drink, or been robbed, or were out 
of ships, and many of them were very fine men. Some 
were foreigners — so much so that a bit farther down the 
road a Norwegian lady carried on another similar work, 
especially for Scandinavians. 

A single story will illustrate the good points which 
some of these men displayed. My hospital chief. Sir 
Frederick Treves, had operated on a great big Norwegian, 
and the man had left the hospital cured. As a rule such 
patients do not even know the name of their surgeon. 
Some three weeks later, however, this man called at 
Sir Frederick Treves's house late one dark night. Having 
asked if he were the surgeon who had operated on him 
and getting a reply in the affirmative, he said he had 
come to return thanks, that since he left hospital he had 
been wandering about without a penny to his name, wait- 
ing for a ship, but had secured a place on that day. He 
proceeded to cut out from the upper edge of his- trousers 
a gold Norwegian five-kronen piece which his wife had 
sewed in there to be his stand-by in case of absolute need. 
He had been so hungry that he had been tempted to use 
it, but now had come to present it as a token of gratitude 
— upon which he bowed and disappeared. Sir Frederick 
said that he was so utterly taken aback that he found 
himself standing in the hall, holding the coin, and bowing 
his visitor out. He said he could no more return it than 
you could offer your teacher a "tip," and he has pre- 
served it as a much-prized possession. 

The underground lodging-house work did me lots of 
good. It brought me into touch with real poverty — a 
very graveyard of life I had never surmised. The den- 
izens of those miserable haunts were men from almost 
every rank of life. They were shipwrecks from the ocean 
of humanity, drifted up on the last beach. There were 



EARLY WORK IN LONDON 49 

large open fireplaces in the dens, over which those who 
had any food cooked it. Often while the other doctor or 
I was holding services, one of us would have to sit down 
on some drunken man to keep him from making the 
proceedings impossible; but there was always a modicum 
who gathered around and really enjoyed the singing. 

We soon found that there were no depths of con- 
temptible treachery which some among these new ac- 
quaintances would not attempt. We became gradually 
hardened to the piteous tales of ill luck, of malignant per- 
secution, and of purely temporary embarrassments, and 
learned soon to leave behind us purses, and watches, 
and anything else of value, and to keep some specially 
worn clothing for this service. 

•^ There was always a narrow passage from the front 
door to the staircase which led down into those huge 
underground basements. The guardians had a room 
inside the door, with a ticket window, where they took 
five or possibly eight cents from the boarders for their 
night's lodging. At about eleven o'clock a "chucker out" 
would go down and clear out all the gentlemen who had 
not paid in advance for the night. This was always a 
very melancholy period of the evening, and in spite of 
our hardened hearts, we always had a score against us 
there. That, however, had to be given in person, for there 
were plenty among our audiences who had taken special 
courses in imitative calligraphy. I.O.U.'s on odd bits of 
paper were a menace to our banking accounts tiU we 
sorrowfully abandoned that convenient way of helping 
often a really deserving case. 

In those houses, somewhat to my astonishment, we 
never once received any physical opposition. We knew 
that some considered us harmless and gullible imbeciles; 
but the great majority were still able to see that it was 



50 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

an attempt, however poor, to help them. Drink, of course, 
was the chief cause of the downfall of most; but as I have 
already said, there were cases of genuine, undeserved 
poverty — hke our sailor friend, overtaken with sickness 
in a foreign port. We induced some to sign the pledge 
and to keep it, if only temporarily, but I think that we 
ourselves got most out of the work, both in pleasure and 
uplift. I recall one clergyman, one doctor, and many men 
from the business world and clerk's life in the flotsam 
and jetsam. 

One poor creature, in the last stage of poverty and 
dirt, proved to be an honours man in Oxford. We looked 
up his record in the University. He assured us that he 
intended to begin again a new life, and we agreed to help 
start him. We took him to a respectable, temperance 
lodging-house, paid for a bed, a bath, and a supper, and 
purchased a good second-hand outfit of clothing for him. 
We were wise enough only to give this to him after we 
had taken away his own while he was having a bath in 
the tub. We did not give him a penny of money, fearing 
his lack of control. Next morning, however, when we 
went for him, he was gone — no one knew where. We 
had the neighbouring saloons searched, and soon got 
track of him. Some "friend" in the temperance house 
had given him sixpence. The barman offered him the 
whiskey; his hands trembled so that he could not lift the 
glass to his mouth, and the barman kindly poured it 
down his throat. We never saw him again. 

In this lodging-house work a friend, now a well-known 
artist and successful business man, often joined us two 
doctors. 

My growing experience had shown me that there was 
a better way to the hearts of my Sunday-School boys 
than merely talking to them. Like myself, they wor- 



EARLY WORK IN LONDON 51 

shipped the athlete, whether he were a prize-fighter or a 
big football player. There were no Y.M.C.A.'s or other 
places for them to get any physical culture, so we ar- 
ranged to clear our dining-room every Saturday evening, 
and give boxing lessons and parallel-bar work: the ceiling 
was too low for the horizontal. The transformation of the 
room was easily accomplished. The furniture was very 
primitive, largely our own construction, and we could 
throw out through the window every scrap of it except 
the table, which was soon "adapted." We also put up 
a quoit pitch in our garden. 

This is no place to discuss the spiritual influences of 
the "noble art of boxing." Personally I have always be- 
lieved in its value; and my Sunday-School class soon 
learned the graces of fair play, how to take defeat and 
to be generous in victory. They began at once bringing 
"pals" whom my exegesis on Scripture would never have 
lured within my reach. We ourselves began to look for- 
ward to Saturday night and Sunday afternoon with an 
entirely new joy. We all learned to respect and so to love 
one another more — indeed, lifelong friendships were 
developed and that irrespective of our hereditary credal 
affiliations. The well-meaning clergyman, however, could 
not see the situation in that light, and declining all in- 
vitations to come and sample an evening's fun instead 
of condemning it unheard, or I should say, unseen, he 
delivered an ultimatum which I accepted — and re- 
signed from his school. 

My Austrahan friend was at that time wrestling with 
a real ragged school on the Highway on Sunday after- 
noons. The poor children there were street waifs and as 
wild as untamed animals. So, being temporarily out of a 
Sunday job, I consented to join him. 

Our school-room this time owed no allegiance to any 



52 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

one but ourselves, and the work certainly proved a real 
labour of love. If the boys were allowed in a minute be- 
fore there was a force to cope with them, the room would 
be wrecked. Everything movable was stolen immediately 
opportunity arose. Boys turned out or locked out during 
session would climb to the windows, and triumphantly 
wave stolen articles. On one occasion when I had 
"chucked out" a specially obstreperous youth, I was met 
with a shower of mud and stones as I passed through a 
narrow alley on my return home. The police were always 
at war with the boys, who annoyed them in similar and 
many other ways. I remember two scholars whose eyes 
were blacked and badly beaten by a "cop" who hap- 
pened to catch them in our doorway, as they declared, 
"only waiting for Sunday School to open." Old scores 
were paid off by both parties whenever possible. My 
own boys did not stay in the old school long after I left, 
but came and asked me to keep a class on Sunday in our 
dining-room — an arrangement in which I gladly ac- 
quiesced, though it involved my eventually abandoning 
the ragged school, which was at least two miles distant. 
With the night work at the lodging-houses, we used 
to combine a very aggressive total abstinence campaign. 
The saloon-keepers as a rule looked upon us as harmless 
cranks, and I have no doubt were grateful for the leaflets 
we used to distribute to their customers. These served 
admirably for kindling purposes. At times, however, they 
got ugly, and once my friend, who was in a saloon talking 
to a customer, was trapped and whiskey poured into his 
mouth. On another occasion I noticed that the outer 
doors were shut and a couple of men backed up against 
them while I was talking to the bartender over the 
counter, and that a few other customers were closing in 
to repeat the same experiment on me. However, they 



EARLY WORK IN LONDON 53 

greatly overrated their own stock of fitness and equally 
underrated my good training, for the scrimmage went all 
my own way in a very short time. 

If ever I told my football chums (for in those days I 
was playing hard) of these adventures in a nether world, 
they always wanted to come and cooperate; but I have 
always felt that reliance on physical strength alone is 
only a menace when the odds are so universally in favour 
of our friend the enemy. At this time also at St. Andrew's 
Church, just across the Whitechapel Road from the 
hospital, the clergyman was a fine athlete and good 
boxer. He was a brother of Lord Wenlocks, and was one 
night returning from a mission service in the Highway 
when he was set upon by footpads and robbed of every- 
thing, including the boots off his feet. Meantime "Jack 
the Ripper" was also giving our residential section a 
most unsavoury reputation. 

My long vacations at this time were always taken on 
the sea. My brother and I used to hire an old fishing 
smack called the "Oyster," which we rechristened the 
"Roysterer." This we fitted out, provisioned, and put 
to sea in with an entirely untrained crew, and without 
even the convention of caring where we were found so 
long as the winds bore us cheerily along. My brother was 
always cook — and never was there a better. We believed 
that he would have made a mark in the world as a chef, 
from his ability to satisfy our appetites and cater to our 
desires out of so ill-supplied a galley. We always took our 
departure from the north coast of Anglesea — a beauti- 
ful spot, and to us especially attractive as being so entirely 
out of the run of traffic that we could do exactly as we 
pleased. We invariably took our fishing gear with us, 
and thus never wanted for fresh food. We could replenish 
our bread, milk, butter, and egg supply at the numerous 



54 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

small ports at which we called. The first year the crew 
consisted of my brother and me — skipper, mate, and 
cook between us — and an Oxford boating friend as 
second mate. For a deckhand we had a young East Lon- 
don parson, whom we always knew as "the Puffin," be- 
cause he so closely resembled that particular bird when 
he had his vestments on. We sailed first for Ireland, but 
the wind coming ahead we ran instead for the Isle of 
Man. The first night at sea the very tall undergraduate 
as second mate had the 12 p.m. to 4 a.m. night watch. The 
tiller handle was very low, and when I gave him his 
course at midnight before turning in myself, he asked me 
if it would be a breach of nautical etiquette to sit down 
to steer, as that was the only alternative to directing 
the ship's course with his ankles. No land was in sight, 
and the wind had died out when I came on deck for my 
4 A.M. to 8 A.M. watch. I found the second mate sitting 
up rubbing his eyes as I emerged from the companion 
hatch. 

"Well, where are we now.f* How is her head? What's 
my course?" 

"Don't worry about such commonplace details," he 
rephed. "I have made an original discovery about these 
parts that I have never seen mentioned before." 

"What's that?" I asked innocently. 

"Well," he rephed, "when I sat down to steer the 
course you gave brought a bright star right over the top- 
mast head and that's what I started to steer by. It's a 
perfect marvel what a game these heavenly bodies play. 
We must be in some place like Alice in Wonderland. I 
just shut my eyes for a second and when next I opened 
them the sun was exactly where I had left that star — " 
and he fled for shelter. 

It is a wonder that we ever got anywhere, for we had 



EARLY WORK IN LONDON 55 

not so much as a chronometer watch, and so in spite of 
a decrepit sextant even our latitude was often an uncer- 
tain quantity. However, we made the port of Douglas, 
whence we visited quite a part of the historic island. As 
our parson was called home from there, we wired for and 
secured another chum to share our labours. Our generally 
unconventional attire in fashionable summer resorts was 
at times quite embarrassing. Barelegged, bareheaded, 
and "tanned to a chip," I was carrying my friend's bag 
along the fashionable pier to see him off on his home- 
ward journey, when a lady stopped me and asked me if 
I were an Eskimo, offering me a job if I needed one. I 
have wondered sometimes if it were a seat in a sideshow 
which she had designed for me. 

We spent that holiday cruising around the island. It 
included getting ashore off the north point of land and 
nearly losing the craft; and also in Ryde Harbour a 
fracas with the harbour authorities. We had run that 
night on top of the full spring tide. Not knowing the 
harbour, we had tied up to the first bollard, and gone 
incontinently to sleep. We were awakened by the sound 
of water thundering on top of us, and rushing up found 
to our dismay that we were lying in the mud, and a large 
sewer was discharging right on to our decks. Before we 
had time to get away or clean up, the harbour master, 
coming alongside, called on us to pay harbour duties. We 
stoutly protested that as a pleasure yacht we were not 
liable and intended to resist to the death any such insult 
being put upon us. He was really able to see at once that 
we were just young fellows out for a holiday, but he had 
the last word before^ a crowd of sight-seers who had 
gathered on the quay above us. 

"Pleasure yacht, pleasure yacht, indeed ! " he shouted 
as he rode away. "I can prove to any man with half an 



56 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

eye that you are nothing but one of them old coal or mud 
barges." 

The following year the wind suited better the other 
way. We were practically all young doctors this time, the 
cook being a very athletic chum in whose rooms were 
collected as trophies, in almost every branch of athletics, 
over seventy of what we called silver "pots." As a cook 
he proved a failure except in zeal. It did n't really interest 
him, especially when the weather was lively. On one 
occasion I reported to the galley, though I was the skip- 
per that year, in search of the rice-pudding for dinner — 
Dennis, our cook, being temporarily indisposed. Such a 
sight as met my view! Had I been superstitious I should 
have fled. A great black column the circumference of the 
boiler had risen not less than a foot above the top rim, i 
and was wearing the iron cover jauntily on one side as a 
helmet. It proved to be rice. He had filled the saucepan 
with dry rice, crowded in a little water, forced the lid on 
very tight and left it to its own devices ! 

Nor, in his subsequent capacity as deckhand, did he 
redeem in our eyes the high qualities of seamanship 
which we had anticipated from him. 

Our tour took us this time through the Menai Straits, 
ma Carnarvon and the Welsh coast, down the Irish 
Channel to Milford Haven. In the region of very heavy 
tides and dangerous rocks near the south Welsh coast, 
we doubled our watch at night. One night the wind fell 
very light, and we had stood close inshore in order to 
pass inside the Bishop Rocks. The wind died out at that 
very moment, and the heavy current driving us down 
on the rocky islands threatened prematurely to termi- 
nate our cruise. The cook was asleep, as usual when 
called, and at last aroused to the nature of the alarm, 
was found leaning forward over the ship's bows with a 



EARLY WORK IN LONDON 57 

lighted candle. When asked what he was doing, he ex- 
plained, "Why, looking for those bishops, of course." 

No holiday anywhere could be better sport than those 
cruises. There was responsibihty, yet rest, mutual de- 
pendence, and a charming, imconventional way of getting 
acquainted with one's own country. We visited Car- 
narvon, Harlech, and other castles, lost our boat in a 
breeze of wind off Dynllyn, climbed Snowden from 
Pwllheli Harbour, and visited a dozen little out-of-the- 
world harbours that one would otherwise never see. 
Fishing and shooting for the pot, bathing and rowing, 
and every kind of healthy out-of-doors pleasure was 
indulged in along the road of travel. Moreover, it was all 
made to cost just as much or as little as you liked. 

Another amusing memory which still remains with me 
was at one little seaport where a very small man not 
over five feet high had married a woman considerably 
over six. He was an idle, drunken Kttle rascal, and I met 
her one day striding down the street with her intoxicated 
little spouse wrapped up in her apron and feebly pro- 
testing. 

One result of these holidays was that I told my 
London boys about them, using one's experiences as 
illustrations; till suddenly it struck me that this was 
shabby Christianity. Why shouldn't these town cage- 
lings share our holidays? Thirteen accompanied me the 
following summer. We had three tents, an old deserted 
factory, and an uninhabited gorge by the sea, all to our- 
selves on the Anglesea coast, among people who spoke 
only Welsh. Thus we had all the joys of foreign travel at 
very little cost. 

Among the many tricks the boys "got away with" 
was one at the big railway junction at Bangor, where 
we had an hour to wait. They apparently got into the 



58 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

baggage-room and stole a varied assortment of labels, 
which they industriously pasted over those on a large 
pile of luggage stacked on the platform. The subsequent 
tangle of destinations can better be imagined than de- 
scribed. 

Camp rules were simple — no clothing allowed except 
short blue knickers and gray flannel shirts, no shoes, 
stockings, or caps except on Sundays. The uniform was 
provided and was as a rule the amateur production of 
numerous friends, for our finances were strictly limited. 
The knickers were not particularly successful, the legs 
frequently being carried so high up that there was no 
space into which the body could be inserted. Every one 
had to bathe in the sea before he got any breakfast. I 
can still see ravenous boys staving off the evil hour till 
as near midday as possible. No one was allowed in the 
boats who could n't swim, an art which they all quickly 
acquired. There was, of course, a regular fatigue party 
each day for the household duties. We had no beds — 
sleeping on long, burlap bags stuffed with hay. A very 
favourite pastime was afforded by our big lifeboat, an 
old one hired from the National Lifeboat Society. The 
tides flowed very strongly alongshore, east on the flood 
tide and west on the ebb. Food, fishing lines, and a 
skipper for the day being provided, the old boat would 
go off with the tide in the morning, the boys had a picnic 
somewhere during the slack-water interim, and came 
back with the return tide. 

When our numbers grew, as they did to thirty the 
second year, and nearly a hundred in subsequent sea- 
sons, thirty or more boys would be packed off daily in 
that way — and yet we never lost one of them. If they 
had not had as many lives as cats it would have been 
quite another story. The boat had suflicient sails to give 



EARLY WORK IN LONDON 59 

the appearance to their unfamiliar eyes of being a sailing 
vessel, but the real work was done with twelve huge oars, 
two boys to an oar being the rule. At nights they used to 
come drifting homeward on the returning tides singing 
their dirges, like some historic barge of old. There was 
one familiar hymn called "Bringing in the Sheaves," 
which like everything else these rascals adapted for the 
use of the moment; and many a time the returning barge 
would be announced to us cooking supper in the old 
factory or in the silent gorge, by the ringing echoes of 
many voices beating with their oars as they came on to 
the words: 

"Pulling at the sweeps, 
Pulling at tlie sweeps; 
Here we come rejoicing, 
Pulling at the sweeps." 

As soon as the old boat's keel shd up upon the beach, 
there would be a rush of as appreciative a supper party 
as ever a cook had the pleasure of catering for. 

An annual expedition was to the top of Mount Snow- 
don, the highest in England or Wales. It was attempted 
by land and water. Half of us tramped overland in 
forced marches to the beautiful Menai Straits, crossed 
the suspension bridge, and were given splendid hospital- 
ity and good beds on the straw of the large stables at the 
beautiful country seat of a friend at Treborth. Here the 
boat section who came around the island were to meet 
us, anchoring their craft on the south side of the Straits. 
Our second year the naval division did not turn up, and 
some had qualms of conscience that evil might have 
overtaken them. Nor did they arrive until we by land 
had conquered the summit, travelling by Bethesda and 
the famous slate quarries, and returning for the second 
evening at Treborth. We then found that they had been 



60 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

stranded on the sands in Red Wharf Bay, so far from 
shore that they could neither go forward nor back; had 
thus spent their first night in a somewhat chilly manner 
in old bathing machines by the land wash, and supped 
off the superfluous hard biscuit which they had been re- 
serving for the return voyage. They were none the worse, 
however, our genial host making it up to them in an 
extra generous provision and a special evening entertain- 
ment. One of my smartest boys (a Jew by nationality, 
for we made no distinctions in election to our class), in 
recounting his adventures to me next day, said: "My! 
Doctor, I did have some fun kidding that waiter in the 
white choker. He took a Hking to me so I let him pal up. 
I told him my name was Lord Shaftesbury when I was 
home, but I asked him not to let it out, and the old bloke 
promised he wouldn't." The "old bloke" happened to 
be our host, who was always in dress-clothes in the 
evening, the only time we were at his house. 

These holidays were the best lessons of love I could 
show my boys. It drew us very closely together; and to 
make the boys feel it less a charitable affair, every one 
was encouraged to save up his railway fare and as much 
more as possible. By special arrangement with the rail- 
way and other friends, and by very simple living, the 
per caput charges were so much reduced that many of 
the boys not only paid their own expenses, but even 
helped their friends. The start was always attended by 
a crowd of relatives, all helping with the baggage. The 
father of one of my boys was a costermonger, and had a 
horse that he had obtained very cheap because it had a 
disease of the legs. He always kept it in the downstairs 
portion of his house, which it entered by the front door. 
It was a great pleasure to him to come and cart our 
things free to the station. The boys used to load his cart 



EARLY WORK IN LONDON 61 

at our house, and I remember one time that they made 
him haul unconsciously all the way to the big London 
terminal at Euston half our furniture, including our coal 
boxes. His son, a most charming boy, made good in life 
in Australia and bought a nice house in one of the sub- 
urbs for his father and mother. I had the pleasure one 
night of meeting them all there. The father was terribly 
uneasy, for he said he just could not get accustomed to 
it. All his old "pals" were gone, and his neighbours' 
tastes and interests were a great gulf between them. I 
heard later that as soon as his son left England again the 
old man sold the house, and returned to the more con- 
genial associations of a costermonger's life, where I be- 
lieve he died in harness. 

The last two years of my stay in London being occu- 
pied with resident work at hospital, I could not find 
time for such far-off holidays, and at the suggestion of 
my chief. Sir Frederick Treves, himself a Dorsetshire 
man, we camped by permission of our friends, the 
owners, in the grounds of Lul worth Castle, close by the 
sea. The class had now developed into a semi-military 
organization. We had acquired real rifles — old-timers 
from the Tower of London — and our athletic clubs 
were portions of the Anglesey Boys' Brigade, which 
antedated the Boys' Brigade of Glasgow, forerunner of 
the Church Lads' Brigade, and the Boy Scouts. 

One of the great attractions of the new camping- 
ground was the exquisite country and the splendid coast, 
with chalk cliffs over which almost any one could fall 
with impunity. Lulworth Cove, one of the most pic- 
turesque in England, was the summer resort of my chief, 
and he being an expert mariner and swimmer used not 
only very often to join us at camp, but always gave the 
boys a fine regatta and picnic at his cottage. Our water 



62 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

polo games were also a great feature here, the water 
being warm and enabling us easily to play out the games. 
There are also numerous beautiful castles and country 
houses all the way between Swanage and Weymouth, 
and we had such kindness extended to us wherever we 
went that every day was a dream of joy to the lads. 
Without any question they acquired new visions and 
ideals through these experiences. 

We always struck camp at the end of a fortnight, hav- 
ing sometimes arranged with other friends with classes 
(A their own to step into our shoes. The present head 
master of Shrewsbury and many other distinguished 
persons shared with us some of the educative joys of 
those days. Among the many other more selfish portions 
of the hohdays none stand out more clearly in my mem- 
ory than the August days when partridge and grouse 
shooting used to open. Most of my shooting was done 
over the delightful highlands around Bishop's Castle in 
Shropshire, on the outskirts of the Welsh hills, in Clun 
Porest, and on the heather-covered Longmynds. How I 
loved those days, and the friends who made them pos- 
sible — the sound of the beaters, the intelligent setters 
and retrievers, the keepers in velveteens, the lunches 
under the shade of the great hedges or in lovely cottages, 
where the ladies used to meet us at midday, and every 
one used to jolly you about not shooting straight, and 
you had to take refuge in a thousand "ifs." 

As one looks back on it all from Labrador, it breathes 
the aroma of an old civilization and ancient customs. 
Much of the shooting was over the old lands of the 
Walcotts of Walcott Hall, a family estate that had been 
bought up by Earl Chve on his return from India, and 
was now in the hands of his descendant, an old bache- 
lor who shot very little, riding from one good stand 



EARLY WORK IN LONDON 63 

to another on a steady old pony. There were many such 
estates, another close by being that of the Oakovers of 
Oakover, a family that has since sold their heritage. 

A thousand time-honoured old customs, only made 
acceptable by their hoary age, added, and still continue 
to add in the pleasures of memory, to the joys of those 
days, with which golf and tennis and all the wonderful 
luxury of the modern summer hotel seem never able to 
compete. It is right, however, that such eras should pass. 

The beautiful forest of Savernake, that in my school 
days I had loved so well, and which meant so much to 
us boys, spoke only too loudly of the evil heirloom of the 
laws of entail. Spendthrift and dissolute heirs had made 
it impossible for the land to be utilized for the benefit of 
the people, and yet kept it in the hands of utterly un- 
deserving persons. Being of royal descent they still bore 
a royal name even in my day; but it was told of them 
that the last, who had been asked to withdraw from the 
school, on one occasion when, half drunk, he was de- 
fending himseK from the gibes and jeers of grooms and 
'ostlers whom he had made his companions, rose with ill- 
assumed dignity and with an oath declared that he was 
their king by divine right if only he had his dues. Look- 
ing back it seems to me that the germs of democratic 
tendencies were sown in me by just those very incidents. 



CHAPTER IV 

AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 

I HAVE never ceased to regret that there was not more 
corporate Hfe in our medical school, but I believe that 
conditions have been greatly improved since my day. 
Here and there two or three classmates would "dig" to- 
gether, but otherwise, except at lectures or in hospitals, 
we seldom met unless it was on the athletic teams. We 
had no playground of our own, and so, unable to get 
other hospitals to combine, when a now famous St. 
Thomas man and myself hired part of the justly cele- 
brated London Rowing Club Headquarters at Putney 
for a united hospitals' headquarters, we used to take our 
blazers and more cherished possessions home with us at 
night for fear of distraint of rent. 

They were great days. Rowing on the Thames about 
Putney is not like that at Oxford on a mill-pond, or as at 
Cambridge on what we nicknamed a drain that should 
be roofed over. Its turgid waters were often rough enough 
to sink a rowing shell, and its busy traffic was a thing 
with which to reckon. But it offered associations with all 
kinds of interesting places, historical and otherwise, from 
the Star and Garter at Richmond and the famous Park 
away to Boulter's Lock and Cleveden Woods, to the 
bathing pools about Taplow Court, the seat of the senior 
branch of our family, and to Marlow and Goring where 
our annual club outings were held. Twice I rowed in the 
inter-hospital race from Putney to Mortlake, once as 
bow and again as stroke. During those early days the 
"London" frequently had the best boat on the river. 

Having now finished my second year at hospital and 



AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 65 

taken my preliminary examinations, including the sci- 
entific preliminary, and my first bachelor of medicine 
for the University of London degree, I had advanced to 
the dignity of "walking the hospitals," carried a large 
shining stethoscope, and spent much time following the 
famous physicians and surgeons around the wards. 

Our first appointment was clerking in the medical 
wards. We had each so many beds allotted to us, and it 
was our business to know everything about the patients 
who occupied them, to keep accurate "histories" of all 
developments, and to be ready to be quizzed and queried 
by our resident house physician, or our visiting con- 
sultant on the afternoon when he made his rounds, fol- 
lowed by larger or smaller crowds of students according 
to the value which was placed upon his teaching. I was 
lucky enough to work under the famous Sir Andrew 
Clark, Mr. Gladstone's great physician. He was a 
Scotchman greatly beloved, and always with a huge 
following to whom he imparted far more valuable truths 
than even the medical science of thirty years ago afforded. 
His constant message, repeated and repeated at the risk 
of wearying, was: "Gentlemen, you must observe for 
yourselves. It is your observation and not your memory 
which counts. It is the patient and not the disease whom 
you are treating." 

Compared with the methods of diagnosis to-day those 
then were very limited, but Sir Andrew's message was 
the more important, showing the greatness of the man, 
who, though at the very top of the tree, never for a mo- 
ment tried to convey to his followers that his knowledge 
was final, but that any moment he stood ready to aban- 
don his position for a better one. On one occasion, to illus- 
trate this point, while he was in one of the largest of our 
wayds (one with four divisions and twenty beds each) he 



66 A LABEADOR DOCTOR 

was examining a lung case, while a huge class of fifty 
young doctors stood around. 

"What about the sputum, Mr. Jones?" he asked. 
"What have you observed coming from these lungs.'^ " 

"There is not much quantity, sir. It is greenish in 
colour." 

"But what about the microscope, Mr. Jones .f^ What 
does that show?" 

"No examination has been made, sir." 

"Gentlemen," he said, "I will now go to the other 
ward, and you shall choose a specimen of the sputum of 
some of these cases. When I return we will examine it 
and see what we can learn." 

When he returned, four specimens awaited him, the 
history and diagnoses of the cases being known only to 
the class. The class never forgot how by dissolving and 
boiling, and with the microscope, he told us almost more 
from his examination of each case than we knew from 
all our other information. His was real teaching, and re- 
minds one of the Glasgow professor who, in order to 
emphasize the same point of the value of observation, 
prepared a little cupful of kerosene, mustard, and castor 
oil, and calling the attention of his class to it, dipped a 
finger into the atrocious compound and then sucked his 
finger. He then passed the mixture around to the stu- 
dents who all did the same with most dire results. When 
the cup returned and he observed the faces of his students, 
he remarked: "Gentlemen, I am afraid you did not use 
your powers of obsairvation. The finger that I put into 
the cup was no the same one that I stuck in my mouth 
afterwards." 

Sir Stephen Mackenzie, who operated on the Emperor 
Frederick, was another excellent teacher under whom we 
had the good fortune to study. Indeed, whatever could 



AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 67 

be said against the teaching of our college, in this much 
more important field of learning, the London Hospital 
was most signally fortunate, and, moreover, was famed 
not only in London, but all the world over. Our "walking 
class" used to number men from the United States to 
Australia, insomuch that the crowds became so large 
that the teachers could not get room to pass along. It 
was this fact which led to the practice, now almost uni- 
versal, of carrying the patient in his bed with a nurse 
in attendance into the theatre for observation as more 
comfortable and profitable for all concerned. 

On changing over to the surgical side in the hospital, 
we were employed in a very similar manner, only we 
were called "dressers,'* and under the house surgeon had 
all the care of a number of surgical patients. My good 
fortune now brought me under the chieftaincy of Sir 
Frederick Treves, the doyen of teachers. His great mes- 
sage was self-reliance. He taught dogmatically as one 
having authority, and always insisted that we should 
make up our minds, have a clear idea of what we were 
doing, and then do it. His ritual was always thought out, 
no detail being omitted, and each person had exactly his 
share of work and his share of responsibility. It used 
greatly to impress patients, and he never underestimated 
the psychical value of having their complete confidence. 
Thus, on one occasion asking a dresser for his diagnosis, 
the student replied: 

"It might be a fracture, sir, or it might be only 
sprained." 

"The patient is not interested to know that it might 
be measles, or it might be toothache. The patient wants 
to know what is the matter, and it is your business to 
tell it to him or he will go to a quack who will inform 
him at once." 



68 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

All his teachings were, like Mark Twain's, enhanced 
by such over-emphasis or exaggeration. He could make 
an article in the "British Medical Journal" on Cholecys- 
tenterostomy amusing to a general reader, and make an 
ordinary remark as cutting as an amputation knife. He 
never permitted laxity of any kind in personal appear- 
ance or dress, or any imposing on the patients. His habit 
of saying openly exactly what he meant made many 
people fear, as much as they respected, him. However, 
he was always, in spite of it, the most popular of all the 
chiefs because he was so worth while. 

One incident recurs to my mind which I must recount 
as an example when psychology failed. A Whitechapel 
"lady," suffering with a very violent form of delirium 
tremens, was lying screeching in a strait- jacket on the 
cushioned floor of the padded room. With the usual huge 
queue of students following, he had gone in to see her, 
as I had been unable to get the results desired with a 
reasonable quantity of sedatives and soporifics. It was a 
very rare occasion, for cases which did not involve active 
surgery he left strictly alone. After giving a talk on psy- 
chical influence he had the jacket removed as "a relic 
of barbarism," and in a very impressive way looking into 
her glaring eyes and shaking his forefinger at her, he 
said: "Now, you are comfortable, my good woman, and 
will sleep. You will make no more disturbance whatever." 
There was an unusual silence. The woman remained 
absolutely passive, and we all turned to follow the chief 
out. Suddenly the "lady" called out, "Hi, hi," — and 
some perverse spirit induced Sir Frederick to return. 
Looking back with defiant eyes she screamed out, " You ! 

You with a faice! You do think yerself clever, 

don't yer.f^" The strange situation was only relieved by 
his bursting into a genuine fit of laughter. 



AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 69 

Among other celebrated men who were admired and 
revered was Mr. Harry Fen wick on the surgical side, for 
whom I had the honom* of illustrating in colours his prize 
Jacksonian essay. Any talent for sketching, especially in 
colours, is of great value to the student of medicine. Once 
you have sketched a case from nature, with the object 
of showing the peculiarity of the abnormality, it remains 
p>ermanently in your mind. Besides this, it forces you to 
note small differences; in other words, it teaches you to 
"obsairve." Thus, in the skin department I was sent 
to reproduce a case of anthrax of the neck, a rare disease 
in England, though all men handhng raw hides are liable 
to contract it. The area had to be immediately excised; 
yet one never could forget the picture on one's mind. On 
another occasion a case of genuine leprosy was brought 
in, with all the dreadful signs of the disease. The macula 
rash was entirely unique so far as I knew, but a sketch 
greatly helped to fix it on one's memory. The poor pa- 
tient proved to be one of the men who was handling the 
meat in London's greatest market at Smithfield. A tre- 
mendous hue and cry spread over London when some- 
how the news got into the paper, and vegetarianism 
received a temporary boost which in my opinion it still 
badly needs for the benefit of the popular welfare. 

Among the prophets of that day certainly should be 
numbered another of our teachers. Dr. Sutton, an author, 
and very much of a personality. For while being one of 
the consulting physicians of the largest of London hos- 
pitals, he was naturally scientific and strictly profes- 
sional. He was very far, however, from being the con- 
ventionalist of those days, and the younger students 
used to look greatly askance at him. His message always 
was: "Drugs are very little use whatever. Nature is the 
source of healing. Give her a chance." Thus, a careful 



70 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

history would be read over to him; all the certain signs 
of typhoid would be noted — and his comment almost 
always was: "This case won't benefit by drugs. We will 
have the bed wheeled out into the sunshine." The next 
case would be acute lobar pneumonia and the same 
treatment would be adopted. "This patient needs air, 
gentlemen. We must wheel him out into the sunshine" — 
and so on. How near we are coming to his teaching in 
these days is already impressing itself upon our minds. 
Unfortunately the fact that the doctors reahze that 
medicines are not so potent as our forbears thought has 
not left the public with the increased confidence in the 
profession which the infinitely more rational treatment 
of to-day justifies, and valuable time is wasted and fatal 
delays incurred, by a return of the more impressionable 
public to quacks with high-sounding titles, or to cults 
where faith is almost credulity. 

Truly one has hved through wonderful days in the 
history of the healing art. The first operations which I 
saw performed at our hospitals were before Lord Lister's 
teaching was practised; though even in my boyhood I 
remember getting leave to run up from Marlborough to 
London to see my brother, on whom Sir Joseph Lister 
had operated for osteomyelitis of the leg. Our most 
famous surgeon in 1880 was Sir Walter Rivington; and 
to-day there rises in memory the picture of him removing 
a leg at the thigh, clad in a blood-stained, black velvet 
coat, and without any attempt at or idea of asepsis. The 
main thing was speed, although the patient was under 
ether, and in quickly turning round the tip of the sword- 
like amputation knife, he made a gash in the patient's 
other leg. The whole thing seemed horrible enough to us 
students, but the surgeon smiled, saying, "Fortunately 
it is of no importance, gentlemen. The man will not live." 



AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 71 

The day came when every one worked under clouds of 
carbolic steam which fizzed and spouted from large brass 
boilers over everything; and then the time when every 
one was criticizing the new, young surgeon, Treves, who 
was daring to discard it, and getting as good results by 
scrupulous cleanliness. His aphorism was, "Gentlemen, 
the secret of surgery is the nailbrush." Now with blood 
examinations, germ cultures, sera tests, X-rays, and a 
hundred added improvements, one can say to a fisher- 
man in far-off Labrador arriving on a mail steamer, and 
to whom every hour lost in the fishing season spells 
calamity, "Yes, brother, you can be operated on and the 
wound will be healed and you will be ready to go back 
by the next steamer, unless some utterly unforeseen cir- 
cumstance arises." 

The falHbility of diagnosis was at this very impres- 
sionable time fixed upon my mind — a fact that has 
since served me in good stead. For what can be more 
reactionary in human life than the man who thinks he 
knows it all, whether it be in science, philosophy, or 
religion.'^ 

During my Christmas vacation I was asked to go 
north and visit my father's brother, a well-known cap- 
tain in Her Majesty's Navy, who was also an inventor 
in gun machinery and sighting apparatus, and who had 
been appointed the naval head of Lord Armstrong's 
great works at Yarrow-on-the-Tyne. All that I was told 
was that he had been taken with such severe pains in 
the back that he needed some one with him, and my 
new-fledged dignity of "walking the hospitals" was sup- 
posed to qualify me especially for the post. Already my 
uncle had seen many doctors in London and had been 
ordered to the Continent for rest. After some months, 
not a bit improved, he had again returned to London. 



72 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

This time the doctor told his wife that it was a mental 
trouble, and that he should be sent to an asylum. This 
she most indignantly denied, and yet desired my com- 
pany as the only medical Grenfell, who at such a crisis 
could stay in the house without being looked upon as a 
warder or keeper. Meantime they had consulted Sir 
C. P., who had told my imcle that he had an aneurism 
of his aorta, and that he must be prepared to have it 
break and kill him any minute. His preparations were 
accordingly all made, and personally I fully anticipated 
that he would fall dead before I left. He put up a won- 
derful fight against excruciating pain, of which I was 
frequently a witness. But the days went by and nothing 
happened, so I returned to town and another young 
doctor took my place. He also got tired of waiting and 
suggested it might be some spinal trouble. He induced 
them once more to visit London and see Sir Victor 
Horsley, whose work on the brains of animals and men 
had marked an epoch in our knowledge of the central 
nervous system. Some new symptoms had now super- 
vened, and the famous neurologist at once diagnosed a 
tumour in the spinal canal. Such a case had never pre- 
viously been op>erated on successfully, but there was no 
alternative. The operation was brilliantly performed 
and a wonderful success obtained. The case was quoted 
in the next edition of our surgical textbooks. 

A little later my father's health began to fail in 
London, the worries and troubles of a clergyman's work 
among the poor creatures who were constantly passing 
under his care utterly overwhelming him. We had agreed 
that a long change of thought was necessary and he and 
I started for a fishing and sight-seeing tour in Norway. 
Our steamer was to sail from the Tyne, and we went up 
to Newcastle to catch it. There some evil fiend persuaded 



AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 73 

my father to go and consult a doctor about his illness, 
for Newcastle has produced some well-known names in 
medicine. Thus, while I waited at the hotel to start, my 
father became persuaded that he had some occult dis- 
ease of the liver, and must remain in Newcastle for 
treatment. I, however, happened to be treasurer of the 
voyage, and for the first time asserting my professional 
powers, insisted that I was family physician for the time, 
and turned up in the evening with all our round-trip 
tickets and reservations taken and paid for. In the morn- 
ing I had the trunks packed and conveyed aboard, and 
we sailed together for one of the most enjoyable holidays 
I ever spent. We travelled much afoot and in the little 
native carriages called " stolkjserre," just jogging along, 
staying anywhere, fishing in streams, and living an 
open-air life which the increasing flood of tourists in 
after years have made much less possible. We both came 
back fitter in body and soul for our winter's work. 

My father's death a year later made a great difference 
to me, my mother removing to live with my grandmother 
at Hampstead, it being too lonely and not safe for her 
to live alone in East London. Twice our house had been 
broken into by burglars, though both times fruitlessly. 
The second occasion was in open daylight during the 
hour of evening service on a Sunday. Only a couple of 
maids would have been in the house had I not been 
suffering from two black eyes contracted during the 
Saturday's football game. Though I had accompanied 
the others out, decidedly my appearance might have 
led to misinterpretations in church, and I had returned 
unnoticed. The men escaped by some method which 
they had discovered of scaling a high fence, but I was 
close behind following them through the window by 
which they had entered. Shortly afterward I happened 



74 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

to be giving evidence at the Old Bailey on one of the 
many cases of assault and even murder where the victims 
were brought into hospital as patients. London was ring- 
ing with the tale of a barefaced murder at Murray Hill in 
North London, where an exceedingly clever piece of de- 
tective work, an old lantern discovered in a pawnbroker's 
shop in Whitechapel — miles away from the scene of the 
crime — was the means of bringing to trial four of the 
most rascally looking villains I ever saw. The trial pre- 
ceded ours and we had to witness it. One of the gang 
had turned "Queen's evidence" to save his own neck. 
So great was the hatred of the others for him and the 
desire for revenge that even in the court they were hand- 
cuffed and in separate stands. Fresh from my own Httle 
fracas I learned what a fool I had been, for in this case 
also the deed was done in open dayhght, and the lawn 
had tight wires stretched across it. The young son, giving 
chase as I did, had been tripped up and shot through his 
abdomen for his pains. He had, however, crawled back, 
made his will, and was subsequently only saved by a 
big operation. He looked in terrible shape when giving 
evidence at the trial. 

The giving of expert evidence on such occasions was 
the only opportunity which the young sawbones had of 
earning money. True we only got a guinea a day and 
expenses, but there were no other movie shows in those 
days, and we learned a lot about medical jurisprudence, 
a subject which always greatly interested me. It was no 
uncommon sight either at the "London" or the "Poj>- 
lar," at both of which I did interne work, to see a police- 
man always sitting behind the screen at the foot of the 
patient's bed. One man, quite a nice fellow when not 
occupied in crime, had when furiously drunk killed his 
wife and cut his own throat. By the curious custom of 



AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 75 

society all the skill and money that the hospital could 
oflFer to save a most valuable life was as usual devoted to 
restoring this man to health. He was weaned slowly back 
from the grave by special nurses and treatment, till it 
began to dawn upon him that he might have to stand 
his trial. He would ask me if I thought he would have to 
undergo a long term, for he had not been conscious of 
what he was doing. As he grew better, and the policeman 
arrived to watch him, he decided that it would probably 
be quite a long time. He had a little place of his own 
somewhere, and he used to have chickens and other 
presents sent up to fellow patients, and would have done 
so to the nurses, only they could not receive them. I was 
not personally present at his trial, but I felt really sorry 
to hear that they hanged him. 

Many of these poor fellows were only prevented from 
ending their own lives by our using extreme care. The 
case of one wretched man, driven to desperation, I still 
remember. "Patient male; age forty-five; domestic 
trouble — fired revolver into his mouth. Finding no 
phenomena of interest develop, fired a second chamber 
into his right ear. Still no symptoms worthy of notice. 
Patient threw away pistol and walked to hospital." 
Both bullets had lodged in the thick parts of his skull, 
and doing no damage were left there. A subsequent note 
read: "Patient to-day tried to cut his throat with a 
dinner-knife which he had hidden in his bed. Patient 
met with no success." Another of my cases which inter- 
ested me considerably was that of a professional burglar 
who had been operated upon in almost every part of the 
kingdom, and was inclined to be communicative, as the 
job which had brought him to hospital had cost him a 
broken spine. Very httle hope was held out to him that 
he would ever walk again. He was clear of murder, for 



76 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

he said it was never his practice to carry firearms, being 
a nervous man and apt to use them if he had them and 
got alarmed when busy burglaring. He rehed chiefly on 
his extraordinary agiUty and steady head to escape. His 
only yarn, however, was his last. He and a friend had 
been detailed by the gang to the job of plundering one 
of a row of houses. The plans of the house and of the 
enterprise were all in order, but some unexpected alarm 
was given and he fled upstairs, climbed through a sky- 
light onto the roof, and ran along the gables of the tiles, 
not far ahead of the police, who were armed and firing 
at him. He could easily have gotten away, as he could 
run along the coping of the brick parapet without turn- 
ing a hair, but he was brought up by a narrow side street 
on which he had not counted, not having anticipated, 
like cats, a battle on the tiles. It was only some twelve 
or fifteen feet across the gap, and the landing on the 
other side was a flat roof. Taking it all at a rush he cleared 
the street successfully, but the flat roof, black with ages 
of soot, proved to be a glass skylight, and he entered a 
house in a way new even to him. His falling on a stone 
floor many feet below accounted for his "unfortunate 
accident " ! After many months in bed, the man took an 
unexpected turn, his back mended, and with only a 
slight leg paralysis he was able to return to the outside 
world. His long suffering and incarceration in hospital 
were accepted by the law as his punishment, and he 
assured me by all that he held sacred that he intended 
to retire into private life. Oddly enough, however, while 
on another case, I saw him again in the prisoner's dock 
and at once went over and spoke to him. « 

"Drink this time. Doctor," he said. "I was down on 
my luck and the barkeeper went out and left his till 
open. I climbed over and got the cash, but there was so 



AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 77 

little space between the bar and the wall that with my 
stiff back I could n't for the life of me get back. I was 
jammed like a stopper in a bottle." 

Among many interesting experiences, one especially 
I shall never forget. Like the others, it occurred during 
my service for Sir Frederick Treves as house-surgeon, 
and I believe he told the story. A very badly burned 
woman had been brought into hospital. Her dress had 
somehow got soaked in paraflBn and had then taken fire. 
Her terribly extensive burns left no hope whatever of her 
recovery, and only the conventions of society kept us 
from giving the poor creature the rehef of euthanasia, or 
some cup of laudanum negus. But the law was inter- 
ested. A magistrate was brought to the bedside and the 
husband sent for. The nature of the evidence, the mean- 
ing of an oath, the importance of the poor creature 
acknowledging that her words were spoken "in hopeless 
fear of immediate death," were all duly impressed upon 
what remained of her mind. The police then brought in 
the savage, degraded-looking husband, and made him 
stand between two policemen at the foot of the bed, fac- 
ing his mangled wife. The magistrate, after preliminary 
questions, asked her to make her dying statement as to 
how she came by her death. There was a terrible moment 
of silence. It seemed as if her spirit were no longer able 
to respond to the stimuli of life on earth. Then a sudden 
rebound appeared to take place, her eyes lit up with a 
flash of light, and even endeavouring to raise her piteous 
body, she said, "It was an accident. Judge. I upset the 
lamp myself, so help me God"; and just for one moment 
her eyes met those of her miserable husband. It was the 
last time she spoke. 

Tragedy and comedy ran hand in hand even in this 
work. St. Patrick's Day always made the hospital busy, 



78 ' A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

just as Christmas was the season for burned children. 
Beer in an East London "pub" was generally served in 
pewter pots, as they were not easily broken. A common 
head injury was a circular scalp cut made by the heavy 
bottom rim, a wound which bled horribly. A woman was 
brought in on one St. Patrick's Day, her scalp turned for- 
ward over her face and her long hair a mass of clotted 
blood from such a stroke, made while she was on the 
ground. When the necessary readjustments had been 
made and she was leaving hospital cured, we asked her 
what had been the cause of the trouble. "'T was just an 
accidint, yer know. Sure, me an' another loidy was just 
havin' a few words." 

On another occasion late at night, we were called out 
of bed by a cantankerous, half-drunken fellow whom 
the night porter could not pacify. "I'm a regular sub- 
scriber to this hospital, and I have never had my dues 
yet," he kept protesting. A new drug to produce im- 
mediate vomiting had just been put on the market, and 
as it was exactly the treatment he required, we gave him 
an injection. To our dismay, though the medicine is in 
common use to-day, either the poison which he had been 
drinking or the drug itself caused a collapse followed by 
head symptoms. He was admitted, his head shaved and 
icebags applied, with the result that next day he was 
quite well again. But when he left he had, instead of a 
superabundance of curly, auburn hair, a polished white 
knob oiled and shining like a State House at night. We 
debated whether his subscription would be as regular in 
future, though he professed to be profoundly grateful. 

I have digressed, but the intimacy which grew up be- 
tween some of my patients and myself seemed worth 
while recounting;, for they showed me what I never in 
any other way could have understood about the seamy 



AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 79 

side of life in great cities, of its terrible tragedies and 
pathos, of how much good there is in the worst, and how 
much need of courage, and what vast opportunities lie 
before those who accept the service of man as their serv- 
ice to God. It proved to me how infinitely more needed 
are unselfish deeds than orthodox words, and how much 
the churches must learn from the Labour Party, the 
Socialist Party, the Trades-Union, before tens of thou- 
sands of our fellow beings, with all their hopes and fears, 
loves and aspirations, have a fair chance to make good. 
I learned also to hate the liquor traffic with a loathing of 
my soul. I met peers of the realm honoured with titles 
because they had grown rich on the degradation of my 
friends. I saw lives damned, cruelties of every kind per- 
petrated, jails and hospitals filled, misery, want, starva- 
tion, murder, all caused by men who fattened off the 
profits and posed as gentlemen and great people. I have 
seen men's mouths closed whose business in life it was 
to speak out against this accursed trade. I have seen 
men driven from the profession of priests of God, mak- 
ing the Church a stench in the nostrils of men who knew 
values just as well as those trained in the universities do, 
all through alcohol, alcohol, alcohol. This awful war has 
been dragging its weary course for over four years now, 
and yet England has not tackled this curse which is 
throttling her. We sing "God save the King," and pre- 
tend to believe in the prayer, and yet we will not face 
this glaring demon in our midst. Words may clothe ideas, 
but it takes deeds to realize them. 

My parents having gone, it became necessary for me 
to find lodgings — which I did, "imfurnished," in the 
house of a Portuguese widow. Her husband, who had a 
good family name, had gone down in the world, and had 



80 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

disappeared with another "lady." The eldest son, a 
mathematical genius, had been able to pay his way 
through Cambridge University by the scholarships and 
prizes which he had won. One beautiful little dark-eyed 
daughter of seven was playing in a West End Theatre as 
the dormouse in "Ahce in Wonderland." She was second 
fiddle to Alice herself, also, and could sing all her songs. 
Her pay was some five pounds a week, poor enough for 
the attraction she proved, but more than all the rest of 
the family put together earned. At that time I never 
went to theatres. Acquaintances had persuaded me that 
so many of the girls were ruined on the stage that for a 
man taking any interest in Christian work whatever, it 
was wrong to attend. Moreover, among my acquaintances 
there were not a few theatre fans, and I had nothing in 
common with them. The "dormouse," however, used to 
come up and say her parts for my benefit, and that of 
occasional friends, and was so modest and winsome, and 
her earnings so invaluable to the family, that I entirely 
altered my opinion. Then and there I came to the con- 
clusion that the drama was an essential part of art, and 
that those who were trying to elevate and cleanse it, like 
Sir Henry Irving, whose son I had met at Marlborough, 
must have the Support of a public who demanded clean 
plays and good conditions both in front and behind the 
screen. When I came to London my father had asked 
me not to go to anything but Shakespearian or equally 
well-recognized plays until I was twenty-one. Only once 
did I enter a music hall and I had plenty to satisfy me 
in a very few minutes. Vaudevilles are better than in 
those days. The censor does good work, but it is still the 
demand which creates the supply, and whatever im- 
provement has occurred has been largely due to the taste 
of the patrons. Medical students need all the open air 



AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 81 

they can get in order to keep body and soul fit, and our 
contempt for the theatre fan was justifiable. 

My new lodgings being close to Victoria Park afforded 
the opportunity for training if one were unconventional. 
To practise throwing the sixteen-pound hammer re- 
quires rough ground and plenty of space, and as I was 
scheduled for that at the inter-hospital sports, it was 
necessary to work when not too many disinterested 
parties were around. Even an East-Ender's skull is not 
hammer-proof, as I had seen when a poor woman was 
brought into hospital with five circular holes in her head, 
the result of blows inflicted by her husband with a ham- 
mer. The only excuse which the ruflian offered for the 
murder was that she had forgotten to wake him, he had 
been late, and lost his job. -3 ^ , 

A number of the boys in my class were learning to 
swim. There was only one bathing lake and once the 
waters were troubled we drew the line at going in to give 
lessons. So we used to meet at the gate at the hour of 
opening in the morning, and thus be going back before 
most folks were moving. Nor did we always wait for the 
park keeper, but often scaled the gates and so obtained 
an even more exclusive dip. Many an evening we would 
also "flannel," and train round and round the park, or 
Hackney Common, to improve one's wind before some 
big event. For diet at that time I used oatmeal, milk, and 
eggs, and very little or no meat. It was cheaper and 
seemed to give me more endurance; and the real value of 
money was dawning on me. .-1'; 

Victoria Park is one of those open forums where every 
man with a sore spot goes out to air his grievance. On 
Sundays there were little groups around the trees where 
orators debated on everything from a patent medicine 
to the nature of God. Charles Bradlaugh and Mrs. Annie 



82 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

Besant were associated together in iconoclastic efforts 
against orthodox religion, and there was so much truth 
in some of their contentions that they were making no 
little disturbance. Hanging on their skirts were a whole 
crowd of ignorant, dogmatic atheists, who published a 
paper called "The Freethinker," which, while it was a 
villainous and contemptible rag, appealed to the passions 
and prejudices of the partially educated. To answer the 
specious arguments of their propaganda an association 
known as the Christian Evidence Society used to send 
out lecturers. One of them became quite famous for his 
clever arguments and answers, his ready wit, and really 
extensive reading. He was an Antiguan, a black man 
named Edwards, and had been a sailor before the mast. 
I met him at the parish house of an Episcopal clergyman 
of a near-by church, who, under the caption of Christian 
socialism, ran all kinds of social agencies that really 
found their way to the hearts of the people. His messages 
were so much more in deeds than in words that he greatly 
appealed to me, and I transferred my allegiance to his 
church, which was always well filled. I particularly re- 
member among his efforts the weekly parish dance. My 
religious acquaintances were apt to class all such simple 
amusements in a sort of general category as "works of 
the Devil," and turn deaf ears to every invitation to 
point out any evil results, being satisfied with their own 
statement that it was the "thin edge of the wedge." This 
good man, however, was very obviously driving a wedge 
into the hearts of many of his poor neighbours who in 
those days found no opportunity for relief in innocent 
pleasures from the sordid round of life in the drab pur- 
lieus of Bethnal Green. This clergyman was a forerunner 
of his neighbour, the famous Samuel Barnett of Mile 
End, who thought out, started, and for many years pre- 



AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 83 

sided over Toynbee House, the first big university settle- 
ment in East London. His workers preached their gospel 
through phrases and creeds which they accepted with 
mental reservations, but just exactly in such ways as 
they believed in absolutely. At first it used to send a 
shiver down my spine to find a church worker who did n't 
believe in the Creed, and stumbled over all our funda- 
mentals. At first it amazed me that such men would pay 
their own expenses to live in a place like Whitechapel, 
only to work on drain committees, as delinquent land- 
lord mentors, or just to give special educational chances 
to promising minds, or physical training to unfit bodies. 
Yet one saw in their efiForts undeniable messages of real 
love. Personally I could only occasionally run up there 
to meet friends in residence or attend an art exhibition, 
but they taught me many lessons. 

Exactly opposite the hospital was Oxford House, only 
two minutes distant, which combined definite doctrinal 
religion with social work. Being an Oxford effort it had 
great attractions for me. Moreover, right alongside it in 
the middle of a disused sugar refinery I had hired the 
yard, converted it into a couple of lawn-tennis courts, 
and ran a small club. There I first met the famous Dr. 
Hensley Henson, now Bishop of Hereford, and also the 
present Bishop of London, Dr. Winnington-Ingram — 
a good all-round athlete. He used to visit in our wards, 
and as we had a couple of fives courts, a game which 
takes little time and gives much exercise, we used to 
have an afternoon off together, once a week, when he 
came over to hospital. Neither of these splendid men 
were dignitaries in those days, or I am afraid they would 
have found us medicals much more stand-offish. I may 
as well admit that we had not then learned to have any 
respect for bishops or church magnates generally. We 



84 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

liked both of these men because they were unconven- 
tional and good sports, and especially in that they were 
not afraid to tackle the atheist's propaganda in the open. 
I have seen Dr. Henson in Whitechapel debating alone 
against a hall full of opponents and with a fairness and 
infinite restraint, convincing those open to reason that 
they were mistaken. Moreover, I have seen Dr. Ingram 
doing just the same thing standing on a stone in the 
open park. It may all sound very silly when one knows 
that by human minds, or to the human mind, the In- 
finite can never be demonstrated as a mathematical 
proposition. But the point was that these clergy were 
proving that they were real men — men who had courage 
as well as faith, who believed in themselves and their 
message, who deserved the living which they were sup- 
posed to make out of orthodoxy. This the audience knew 
was more than could be said of many of the opponents. 
Christ himself showed his superb manhood in just such 
speaking out. 

Indelibly impressed on my mind still is an occasion 
when one of the most blatant and vicious of these op- 
ponents of religion fell ill. A Salvation Army lass found 
him deserted and in poverty, nursed and looked after 
him and eventually made a new man of him. 

Far and away the most popular of the Park speakers 
was the Antiguan. His arguments were so clever it was 
obvious that he was well and widely read. His absolute 
understanding of the crowd and his witty repartee used 
frequently to cause his oppK)nents to lose their tempers, 
and that was always their undoing. The crowd as a rule 
was very fair and could easily distinguish arguments 
from abuse. Thus, on one Sunday the debate was as to 
whether nature was God. The atheist representative was 
a very loud-voiced demagogue, who when angry betrayed 



AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 85 

his Hibernian origin very markedly. Having been com- 
pletely worsted and the laugh turned against him by a 
clever correction of some one's, he used the few minutes 
given him to reply in violent abuse, ending up that 
"ladies and gentlemen did not come out on holidays to 
spend their time being taught Enghsh by a damned 
nigger." 

"Sir," Edwards answered from the crowd, "I am a 
British subject, born on the island of Antigua, and as 
much an Englishman as any Irishman in the country." 

Edwards possessed an inexhaustible stock of good- 
humour and his laugh could be heard halfway across the 
Park. As soon as his turn came to mount the stone, he 
got the crowd so good-natured that they became angry 
at the interruptions of the enemy, and when some one 
suggested that if nature were that man's God, the near-by 
duckpond was the natural place for him, there was a 
rush for him, and for several subsequent Sundays he was 
not in evidence. Edwards was a poor man, his small 
salary and incessant generosity left him nothing for 
holidays, and he was killing himself with overwork. So 
we asked him to join us in the new house which we were 
fitting up in Palestine Place. He most gladly did so and 
added enormously to our fun. Unfortunately tubercu- 
losis long ago got its grip upon him, and removed a val- 
uable life from East London. 

It was a queer little beehive in which we lived in those 
days, and a more cosmopolitan crowd could hardly have 
been found: one young doctor who has since made his 
name and fortune in Australia; another in whose rooms 
were nearly a hundred cups for prowess in nearly every 
form of athletics, and who also has "made good" in 
professional life, besides several others who for shorter 
or longer periods were allotted rooms in our house. 



86 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

Among the more unusual was the " C. M.," a Brahmin 
from India, a priest in his youth, who had been brought 
back to England by some society to be educated in med- 
ical missionary work, but whom for some reason they 
had dropped. For a short time a clever young Russian of 
Hebrew extraction who was studying for the Church 
helped to render our common-room social engagements 
almost international affairs. 

As I write this I am at Charleston, South Carolina, 
and I see how hard it will be for an American to under- 
stand the possibility of such a motley assembly being 
reasonable or even proper. It seems to me down here 
that there must have been odd feelings sometimes in 
those days. I can only say, however, that I never per- 
sonally even thought of it. East London is so democratic 
that one's standards are simply those of the value of the 
man's soul as we saw it. If he had been yellow with pink 
stripes it honestly would not have mattered one iota to 
most of us. 

It so happened that there was at that time in hospital 
under my care a patient known as "the elephant man." 
He had been starring under that title in a cheap vaude- 
ville, had been seen by some of the students, and invited 
over to be shown to and studied by our best physicians. 
The poor fellow was really exceedingly sensitive about his 
most extraordinary appearance. The disease was called 
"leontiasis," and consisted of an enormous over-devel- 
opment of bone and skin on one side. His head and face 
were so deformed as really to resemble a big animal's 
head with a trunk. My arms would not reach around his 
hat. A special room in a yard was allotted to him, and 
several famous people came to see him — among them 
Queen Alexandra, then the Princess of Wales, who after- 
ward sent him an autographed photograph of herself. 



' AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 87 

He kept it in his room, which was known as the "ele- 
phant house," and it always suggested beauty and the 
beast. Only at night could the man venture out of doors, 
and it was no unusual thing in the dusk of nightfall to 
meet him walking up and down in the little courtyard. 
He used to talk freely of how he would look in a huge 
bottle of alcohol — an end to which in his imagination 
he was fated to come. He was of a very cheerful disposi- 
tion and pathetically proud of his left side which was 
normal. Very suddenly one day he died — the reason 
assigned being that his head fell forward and choked him, 
being too heavy for him to lift up. 

Li 1886 I passed my examinations and duly became a 
member of the College of Physicians and of the Royal 
College of Surgeons of England; and sought some field 
for change and rest, where also I could use my newly 
acquired license to my own, if to no one else's, benefit. 
Among the patients who came to the London Hospital, 
there were now and again fishermen from the large fishing 
fleets of the North Sea. They lived out, as it were, on 
floating villages, sending their fish to market every day 
by fast cutters. Every two or three months, as their turn 
came round, a vessel would leave for the home port on 
the east coast, being permitted, or supposed to be per- 
mitted, a day at home for each full week at sea. As the 
fleets kept the sea summer and winter and the boats 
were small, not averaging over sixty tons, it was a haz- 
ardous calling. The North Sea is nowhere deeper than 
thirty fathoms, much of it being under twenty, and in 
some places only five. Lideed, it is a recently sunken and 
still sinking portion of Europe, so much so that the 
coasts on both sides are constantly receding, and when 
Heligoland was handed over by the English to the 
Kaiser, it was said that he would have to keep jacking 



88 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

it up or soon there would be none left. Shallow waters 
exposed to the fierce gales which sweep the German 
Ocean make deep and dangerous seas, which readily 
break and wash the decks of craft with low freeboard, 
such as the North Sea vessels are obliged to have in order 
to get boats in and out to ferry their fish to the cutter. 

There being no skilled aid at hand, the quickest way 
to get help used to be to send an injured man to market 
with the fish. Often it was a long journey of many days, 
simple fractures became compound, and limbs and facul- 
ties were often thus lost. It so happened that Sir Fred- 
erick Treves had himself a love for navigating in small 
sailing craft. He had made it a practice to cross the 
English Channel to Calais in a sailing lugger every Box- 
ing Day — that is, the day after Christmas. He was 
especially interested in those "that go down to the sea 
in ships " and had recently made a trip among the fishing 
fleets. He told me that a small body of men, interested 
in the religious and social welfare of the deep-sea fisher- 
men, had chartered a small fishing smack, sent her out 
among the fishermen to hold religious services of a simple, 
unconventional type, in order to afford the men an al- 
ternative to the grog vessels when fishing was slack, and 
to carry first aid, the skipper of the vessel being taught 
ambulance work. They wanted, however, very much to 
get a young doctor to go out, who cared also for the 
spiritual side of the work, to see if they could use the 
additional attraction of proper medical aid to gain the 
men*s sympathies. His advice to me was to go and have 
a look at it. "If you go in January you will see some fine 
seascapes, anyhow. Don't go in summer when all of the 
old ladies go for a rest." 

I therefore applied to go out the following January, 
and that fall, while working near the Great London 



AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 89 

docks, I used often to look at the tall East Indiamen, 
thinking that I soon should be aboard just such a vessel 
in the North Sea. It was dark and raining when my 
train ran into Yarmouth, and a dripping, stout fisherman 
in a blue uniform met me at that then unattractive and 
ill-lighted terminus. He had brought a forlorn "growler" 
or four-wheeled cab. Climbing in we drove a mile or more 
along a deserted road, and drew up at last apparently at 
the back of beyond. 

"Where is the ship.''" I asked. 

"Why, those are her topmasts," replied my guide, 
pointing to two posts projecting from the sand. "The 
tide is low and she is hidden by the quay." 

"Heavens!" I thought; "she's no tea clipper, any- 
how." 

I climbed up the bank and peered down in the dark- 
ness at the hull of a small craft, a little larger than our 
old Roysterer. She was just discernible by the dim rays 
of the anchor light. I was hesitating as to whether I 
should n't drive back to Yarmouth and return to London 
when a cheery voice on deck called out a hearty welcome. 
What big things hang on a smile and a cheery word no 
man can ever say. But it broke the spell this time and 
I had my cabby unload my bags on the bank and bade 
him good-night. As his wheels rumbled away into the 
rain and dark, I felt that my cables were cut beyond 
recall. Too late to save me, the cheery voice shouted, 
"Mind the rigging, it's just tarred and greased." I was 
already sliding down and sticking to it as I went. Small 
as the vessel was she was absolutely spotless. Her steward, 
who cooked for all hands, was smart and in a snow-white 
suit. The contrast between-decks and that above was 
very comforting, though my quarters were small. The 
crew were all stocky, good-humoured, and independent. 



90 A LABRADOR DOCTOR ; 

Democratic as East London kad made me, they im- 
pressed me very favourably, and I began to look forward 
to the venture with real pleasure. 

Drink was the worst enemy of these men. The quay- 
sides of the fisherman's quarters teemed with low saloons. 
Wages were even paid off in them or their annexes, and 
grog vessels, luring the men aboard with cheap tobacco 
and low literature, plied their nefarious calling with the 
fleets, and were the death, body and soul, of many of 
these fine specimens of manhood. 

There was never any question as to the real object of 
the Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen. The words "Heal 
the sick" carved in large letters adorned the starboard 
bow, "Preach the Word" was on the port, and around 
the brass rim of the wheel ran the legend, "Jesus said. 
Follow me and I will make you fishers of men." Thirty 
years ago we were more conventional than to-day, and 
I was much surprised to learn from our skipper that we 
were bound to Ostend to ship four tons of tobacco, sent 
over from England for us in bond, as he might not take 
it out consigned to the high seas. In Belgium, however, 
no duty was paid. The only trouble was that our vessel, 
to help -pay its expenses, carried fishing gear, and as 
a fishing vessel could not get a clearance in Belgium. 
Our nets and beams, therefore, had to go out to the 
fishing grounds in a friendly trawler while we passed as 
a mercantile marine during the time we took on our 
cargo. 

So bitter was the cold that in the harbour we got frozen 
in and were able to skate up the canals. We had event- 
ually to get a steamer to go around us and smash our ice 
bonds when we were again ready for sea. During the 
next two months we saw no land except Heligoland and 
Terschelling — or Skilling, as the fishermen called it — 



AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 91 

far away in tlie oflSng. Nor was our deck once clear of ice 
and snow during all the time. 

Our duty was to visit as many fleets as we could, and 
arrange with some reliable vessel to take a stock of to- 
bacco for the use of their special fleet. The ship was to 
carry about six feet of blue bunting on her foretopmast 
stay, a couple of fathoms above her bowsprit end, so 
that all the fleet might know her. She was to sell the 
tobacco at a fixed price that just covered the cost, and 
undersold the "coper" by fifty per cent. She was to 
hoist her flag for business every morning, while the small 
boats were out boarding fish on the carrier, and was to 
lie as far to leeward of the coper as possible so that the 
men could not go to both. Nineteen such floating depots 
were eventually arranged for, with the precaution that if 
any one of them had to return to port, he should bring 
no tobacco home, but hand over his stock and accounts 
to a reliable friend. 

These deep-sea fisheries were a revelation to me, and 
every hour of the long trip I enjoyed. It was amazing to 
me to find over twenty thousand men and boys afloat — 
the merriest, cheerfullest lot which I had ever met. They 
were hail-fellow-well-met with every one, and never 
thought of deprivation or danger. Clothing, food, cus- 
toms, were all subordinated to utility. They were the 
nearest possible thing to a community of big boys, only 
needing a leader. In efficiency and for their daring re- 
sourcefulness in physical difficulties and dangers, they 
were absolutely in a class by themselves, embodying all 
the traits of character which make men love to read the 
stories of the buccaneers and other seamen of the six- 
teenth-century period. 

Each fleet had its admiral and vice-admiral, appointed 
partly by the owner, and partly by the skippers of the 



92 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

vessels. The devil-may-care spirit was always a great 
factor with the men. The admiral directed operations by 
flags in the daytime and by rockets at night, thus indi- 
cating what the fleet was to do and where they were to 
fish. Generally he had the fastest boat, and the cutters, 
hunting for the fleet always lay just astern of the ad- 
miral, the morning after their arrival. Hundreds of men 
would come for letters, packages, to load fish, to get the 
news of what their last assignment fetched in market. 
Moreover, a kind of Parliament was held aboard to con- 
sider policies and hear complaints. 

At first it was a great surprise to me how these men 
knew where they were, for we never saw anything but 
sky and sea, and not even the admirals carried a chro- 
nometer or could work out a longitude; and only a small 
percentage of the skippers could read or write. They all, 
however, carried a sextant and could by rule of thumb 
find a latitude roughly. But that was only done at a pinch. 
The armed lead was the fisherman's friend. It was a 
heavy lead with a cup on the bottom filled fresh each 
time with sticky grease. When used, the depth was always 
called out by the watch, and the kind of sand, mud, or 
rock which stuck to the grease shown to the skipper. 
"Fifteen fathoms and coffee grounds — must be on the 
tail end of the Dogger. Put her a bit more to the west- 
ward, boy," he would remark, and think no more about 
it, though he might have been three or four days looking 
for his fleet, and not spoken to a soul since he left land. 
I remember one skipper used to have the lead brought 
down below, and he could tell by the grit between his 
teeth after a couple of soundings which way to steer. It 
sounds strange even now, but it was so universal, being 
just second-nature to the men, who from boyhood had 
lived on the sea, that we soon ceased to marvel at it. 



AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 93 

Skippers were only just being obliged to have certificates. 
These they obtained by viva voce examinations. You 
would sometimes hear an aspiring student, a great black- 
bearded pirate over forty-seven inches around the chest, 
and possibly the father of eight or ten children, as he 
stamped about in his watch keeping warm, repeating the 
courses — "East end of the Dogger to Horn S.E. by E. 
h and W. point of the island [Heligoland] to Barkum 
S. 2 W. Ower Light to Hazebrough N.N.W." — and so 
on. Their memories were not burdened by a vast range 
of facts, but in these things they were the nearest imag- 
inable to Blind Tom, the famous slave musician. 

Our long round only occupied us about a month, and 
after that we settled down with the fleet known as the 
Great Northerners. Others were the Short Blues, the 
Rashers (because they were streaked like a piece of 
bacon), the Columbia, the Red Cross, and so on. Some- 
times during the night while we were fishing into the 
west, a hundred sail or more of vessels, we would pass 
through another big fleet coming the other way, and 
some of our long trawls and warps would tangle with 
theirs. Beyond the beautiful spectacle of the myriads of 
lights bobbing up and down often enough on mighty 
rough seas — for it needed good breezes to haul our 
trawls — would be the rockets and flares of the en- 
tangled boats, and often enough also rockets and flares 
from friends, and from cutters. One soon became so 
friendly with the men that one would not return at night 
to the ship, but visit around and rejoin the Mission ship 
boarding fish next day, to see patients coming for aid. 
Though it was strictly against sea rules for skippers to 
be off their vessels all night, that was a rule, like all 
others on the North Sea, as often marked in the breach 
as in the observance. A goodly company would get to- 



94 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

gether yarning and often singing and playing games until 
it was time to haul the trawl and light enough to find 
their own vessel and signal for the boat. 

The relation of my new friends to religion was a very 
characteristic one. Whatever they did, they did hard. 
Thus one of the admirals, being a thirsty soul, and the 
grog vessels having been adrift for a longer while than 
he fancied, conceived the fine idea of holding up the 
Heligoland saloons. So one bright morning he "hove his 
fleet to" under the lee of the island and a number of 
boats went ashore, presumably to sell fish. Altogether 
they landed some five hundred men, who held up the few 
saloons for two or three days. As a result subsequently 
only one crew selling fish to the island was allowed 
ashore at one time. The very gamble of their occupation 
made them do things hard. Thus it was a dangerous task 
to throw out a small boat in half a gale of wind, fill her 
up with heavy boxes of fish, and send her to put these 
over the rail of a steamer wallowing in the trough of a 
mountainous sea. 

But it was on these very days when less fish was sent 
to market that the best prices were realized, and so there 
were always a number of dare-devils, who did not care if 
lives were lost so long as good prices were obtained and 
their record stood high on the weekly list of sales which 
was forwarded to both owners and men. I have known 
as many as fourteen men upset in one morning out of 
these boats; and the annual loss of some three hundred 
and fifty men was mostly from this cause. Conditions 
were subsequently improved by the Board of Trade, who 
made it manslaughter against the skipper if any man 
was drowned boarding fish, unless the admiral had shown 
his flags to give the fleet permission to do so. In those 
days, however, I often saw twenty to thirty boats all 



AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 95 

tied up alongside the cutter at one time, the heavy seas 
every now and again rolling the cutter's sail right under 
water, and when she righted again it might come up 
under the keels of some of the boats and tip them upside 
down. Thus any one in them was caught like a mouse 
under a trap or knocked to pieces trying to swim among 
the rushing, tossing boats. 

As a rule we hauled at midnight, and it was always a 
fresh source of wonder, for the trawl was catholic in its 
embrace and brought up anything that came in its way. 
To emphasize how comparatively recently the Channel 
had been dry land, many teeth and tusks of mammoths 
who used to roam its now buried forests were given up 
to the trawls by the ever-shifting sands. Old wreckage of 
every description, ancient crockery, and even a water- 
logged, old square-rigger that must have sunk years 
before were brought one day as far as the surface by the 
stout wire warp. After the loss of a large steamer called 
the Elbe many of the passengers who had been drowned 
were hauled up in this way; and on one occasion great 
excitement was caused in Hull by a fisher lad from that 
port being picked up with his hands tied behind his back 
and a heavy weight on his feet. The defence was that 
the boy had died, and was thus buried to save breaking 
the voyage — supported by the fact that another vessel 
had also picked up the boy and thrown him overboard 
again for the same reason. But those who were a bit 
superstitious thought otherwise, and more especially as 
cruelty to these boys was not unknown. 

These lads were apprenticed to the fishery masters 
largely from industrial or reformatory schools, had no 
relations to look after them, and often no doubt gave the 
limit of trouble and irritation. On the whole, however, 
the system worked well, and a most excellent class (^ 



96 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

capable seamen was developed. At times, however, they 
were badly exploited. During their apprenticeship years 
they were not entitled to pay, only to pocket money, and 
yet sometimes the whole crew including the skipper were 
apprentices and under twenty-one years of age. Even 
after that they were fitted for no other calling but to 
follow the sea, and had to accept the master's terms. 
There were no fishermen's unions, and the men being 
very largely illiterate were often left victims of a peonage 
system in spite of the Truck Acts. The master of a vessel 
has to keep discipline, especially in a fleet, and the best 
of boys have faults and need punishing while on land. 
These skippers themselves were brought up in a rough 
school, and those who fell vicitms to drink and made the 
acquaintance of the remedial measures of our penal sys- 
tem of that day were only further brutalized by it. Re- 
ligion scarcely touched the majority; for their brief 
periods of leave ashore were not unnaturally spent in 
having a good time. To those poisoned by the villainous 
beverages sold on the sordid grog vessels no excess was 
too great. Owners were in sympathy with the Mission in 
trying to oust the coper, because their property, in the 
form of fish, nets, stores, and even sails, were sometimes 
bartered on the high seas for Uquor. On one occasion dur- 
ing a drunken quarrel in the coper's cabin one skipper 
threw the kerosene lamp over another lying intoxicated 
on the floor. His heavy wool jersey soaked in kerosene 
caught fire. He rushed for the deck, and then, a dancing 
mass of flames, leaped overboard and disappeared. 

Occasionally skippers devised punishments with a view 
to remedying the defects of character. Thus one lad, 
who through carelessness had on more than one oc- 
casion cooked the "duff" for dinner badly, was made to 
take his cinders on deck when it was his time to turn 



AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL 97 

in, and go forward to the fore-rigging. Then he had to 
take one cinder, go up to the cross-tree, and throw it over 
into the sea, come down the opposite rigging and repeat 
the act until he had emptied his scuttle. Another who had 
failed to clean the cabin properly had one night, instead 
of going to bed, to take a bucketful of sea water and 
empty it with a teaspoon ruto another, and so to and fro 
until morning. On one occasion a poor boy was put under 
the ballast deck, that is, the cabin floor, and forgotten. 
He was subsequently found dead, drowned in the bilge 
water. It was easy to hide the results of cruelty, for 
being washed overboard was by no means an uncommon 
way of disappearing from vessels with low freeboards in 
the shallow water of the North Sea. 

A very practical outcome in the mission work was the 
organization of the Fisher Lads' Letter- Writing Associa- 
tion. The members accepted so many names of orphan 
lads at sea and pledged themselves to write regularly to 
them. Also, if possible, they were to look them up when 
they returned to land, and indeed do for them much as 
the War Camp Community League members are to-day 
trying to accomplish for our soldiers and sailors. As 
every practical exposition of love must, it met with a 
very real response, and brought, moreover, new interests 
and joys into many selfish lives. 

T remember one lady whose whole care in life had been 
her own health. She had nursed it, and worried over it, 
and enjoyed ill health so long, that only the constant re- 
course to the most refined stimulants postponed the end 
which would have been a merciful relief — to others. The 
effort of letter-writing remade her. Doctors were forgot- 
ten, stimulants were tabooed, the insignia of invalidism 
banished, and to my intense surprise I ran across her at a 
fishing port surrounded by a bevy of blue-jerseyed lads. 



98 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

who were some of those whom she was being blessed by 
helping. 

The best of efforts, however, sometimes "gang aft 
agley." One day I received a letter, evidently written in 
great consternation, from an elderly spinster of singu- 
larly aristocratic connections and an irreproachableness 
of life which was almost painful. The name sent to her 
by one of our skippers as a correspondent who needed 
help and encouragement was one of those which would 
be characterized as common — let us say John Jones. 
By some perverse fate the wrong ship was given as an 
address, and the skipper of it happened to have exactly 
the same name. It appeared that lack of experience in 
just such work had made her letter possibly more affec- 
tionate than she would have wished for under the cir- 
cumstances which developed. For in writing to me she 
enclosed a ferocious letter from a lady of Billingsgate 
threatening, not death, but mutilation, if she continued 
making overtures to "her John.'*^ 



CHAPTER V 

NORTH SEA WORK 

I HAVE dwelt at length iq)on the experiences of the North 
Sea, because trivial as they appear on the surface, they 
concern the biggest problem of human life — the belief 
that man is not of the earth, but only a temporary so- 
journer upon it. This belief, that he is destined to go on 
living elsewhere, makes a vast difference to one's esti- 
mate of values. Life becomes a school instead of a mere 
stage, the object of which is that our capacities for useful- 
ness should develop through using them until we reach 
graduation. What life gives to us can only be of permanent 
importance as it develops our souls, thus enabling us to 
give more back to it, and leaves us better prepared for 
any opportunities than may lie beyond this world. The 
most valuable asset for this assumption is love for the 
people among whom one lives. 

The best teachers in life are far from being those who 
know most, or who think themselves wisest. Show me a 
schoolmaster who does not love his boys and you show 
me one who is of no use. Our faith in our sonship of God 
is immensely strengthened by the puzzling fact that 
even God cannot force goodness into us. His sons, be- 
cause we share His nature. 

These convictions, anyhow, were the mental assets 
with which I had to begin work, and no others. A scien- 
tific training had impressed upon me that big and little 
are very relative terms; that one piece of work becomes 
unexpectedly permanent and big, while that which ap- 
pears to be great, but is merely diffuse, will be temporary 
and ineffective. Experience has taught me that one 



100 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

human life has its limits of direct impetus, but that its 
most lasting value is its indirect influence. The greatest 
Life ever lived was no smaller for being in a carpenter's 
shop, and largely spent among a few ignorant fishermen. 
The Scarabee had a valid apologia pro vita sua in spite 
of Dr. Holmes. Tolstoy on his farm, Milton without his 
sight, Bunyan in his prison, Pasteur in his laboratory, 
all did great things for the world. 

There is so much that is manly about the lives of those 
who follow the sea, so much less artificiality than in 
many other callings, and with our fishermen so many 
fewer of what we call loosely "chances in life," that to 
sympathize with them was easy — and sympathy is a 
long step toward love. Life at sea also gives time and 
opportunity for really knowing a man. It breaks down 
conventional barriers, and indeed almost compels fellow- 
ship and thus an intelligent understanding of the diffi- 
culties and tragedies of the soul of our neighbour. That 
rare faculty of imagination which is the inspiration of all 
great lovers of men is not alone indispensable. Hand in 
hand with this inevitably goes the vision of one's own 
opportunity to help and not to hinder others, even 
though it be through the unattractive medium of the 
collection box — for that gives satisfaction only in pro- 
portion to the sacrifice which we make. 

In plain words the field of work offered me was at- 
tractive. It seemed to promise me the most remunerative 
returns for my abilities, or, to put it in another way, it 
aroused my ambitions sufficiently to make me believe 
that my special capacities and training could be used to 
make new men as well as new bodies. Any idea of sacri- 
fice was balanced by the fact that I never cared very 
much for the frills of life so long as the necessities were 
forthcoming. 



NORTH SEA WORK 101 

The attention that Harold Begbie's book "Twice- 
Born Men" received, was to me later in life a source of 
surprise. One forgets that the various religions and sects 
which aimed at the healing of men's souls have concerned 
themselves more with intellectual creeds than material, 
Christ-like ends. At first it was not so. Paul rejoiced 
that he was a new man. There can be no question but 
that the Gospels show us truly that the change in Christ's 
first followers was from men, the slaves of every ordinary 
human passion, into men who were self -mastered — that 
Christ taught by what he was and did rather than by 
insistence on creeds and words. It has been seeing these 
changes in men's lives, not only in their surroundings, 
though those improve immediately, that reconcile one 
to our environment, and has induced me to live a life- 
time in the wilds. 

Another movement that was just starting at this time 
also interested me considerably. A number of keen young 
men from Oxford and Cambridge, having experienced 
the dangers that beset boys from big English public 
schools who enter the universities without any definite 
help as to their attitude toward the spiritual relation- 
ships of life, got together to discuss the question. They 
recognized that the formation of the Boys' Brigade in 
our conservative social life only touched the youth of 
the poorer classes. Like our English Y.M.C.A., it was not 
then aristocratic enough for gentlemen. They saw, how- 
ever, that athletic attainments carried great weight, and 
that all outdoor accomplishments had a strong attrac- 
tion for boys from every class. Thus it happened that an 
organization called the Public School Camps came into 
being. Its ideal was the uplift of character, and the move- 
ment has grown with immense strides on both sides of 
the Atlantic. 



102 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

An integral part of my summer holidays during these 
years was spent as medical officer at one of these camps. 
For many reasons it was wise in England to run them on 
military lines, for besides the added dignity, it insured 
the ability to maintain order and discipline. Some well- 
known commandant was chosen who was a soldier also 
in the good fight of faith. Special sites were selected, 
generally on the grounds of some big country seat which 
were loaned by the interested lord of the manor, and 
every kind of outdoor attraction was provided which 
could be secured. Besides organized competitive games, 
there was usually a yacht, good bathing, always a gym- 
khana, and numerous expeditions and "hikes." Not a 
moment was left unoccupied. All of the work of the camp 
was done by the boys, who served in turn on orderly 
duty. The officers were always, if possible, prominent 
athletes, to whom the boys could look up as being capable 
in physical as well as spiritual fields. There was a brief 
address each night before "taps" in the big marquee 
used for mess; and one night was always a straight talk 
on the problems of sex by the medical officers, whom 
the boys were advised to consult in their perplexities. 
These camps were among the happiest memories of my 
life, and many of the men to-day gratefully acknowledge 
that the camps were the turning-point of their whole 
lives. The secret was unconventionality and absolute 
naturalness with no "shibboleths." The boys were al- 
lowed to be boys absolutely in an atmosphere of sincere 
if not omniscient fervour. On one occasion when breaking 
up camp, a curly-headed young rascal in my tent, being 
late on the last morning — unknown to any one — went 
.to the train in his pajamas, hidden only by his raincoat. 
At a small wayside station over a hundred miles from 
London, whither he was bound, leaving his coat in the 



NORTH SEA WORK 103 

carriage, lie ventured into the refresliment stall of the 
waiting-room. Unfortunately, however, he came out 
only to find his train departed and himself in his night- 
clothes on the platform without a penny, a ticket, or a 
friend. Eluding the authorities he reached the huge 
Liverpool terminus by night to find a faithful friend 
waiting on the platform for him with the sorely needed 
overgarment. 

No one was ever ashamed to be a Christian, or of what 
Christ was, or what he did and stood for. However, to 
ignore the fact that the mere word "missionary" 
aroused suspicion in the average English unconventional 
mind ■ — such as those of these clean, natural-minded 
boys — would be a great mistake. Unquestionably, as 
in the case of Dickens, a missionary was unpractical if 
not hypocritical, and mildly incompetent if not secretly 
vicious. I found myself always fighting against the idea 
that I was termed a missionary. The men I loved and 
admired, especially such men as those on our athletic 
teams, felt really strongly about it. Henry Martyn — 
as a scholar — was a hero to those who read of him, 
though few did. Moreover, who does not love Charles 
Kingsley.f' Even as boys, we want to be "a man," though 
Kingsley was a "Parson Lot." It always seemed that a 
missionary was naturally discounted until he had proved 
his right to be received as an ordinary being. Once after 
being the guest of a bank president, he told me that my 
stay was followed by that of their bishop, who was a 
person of great importance. When the bishop had gone, 
he asked his two boys one day. "Well, which do you 
like best, the bishop or the doctor?" "Ach," was the 
reply, "the bishop can't stand on his head." On another 
occasion during a visit — while lecturing on behalf of 
the fishermen — and doing my usual evening physical 



104 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

drill in my bedroom, by a great mischance I missed a 
straiglit-arm-balance on a chair, fell over, and nearly 
brought the chandelier of the drawing-room down on the 
heads of some guests. That a so-called "missionary" 
should be so worldly as to wish to keep his body fit 
seemed so unusual that I heard of that trifle a hundred 
times. 

The Church of Christ that is coming will be interested 
in the forces that make for peace and righteousness in 
this world rather than in academic theories as to how to 
get rewards in another. That will be a real stimulus to 
fitness and capacity all round instead of a dope for 
failures. It is that element in missions to-day, such as the 
up-to-date work of the Rockefeller Institute and other 
medical missions in China and India, which alone holds 
the respect of the mass of the people. The value of going 
out merely to make men of different races think as we 
think is being proportionately discounted with the in- 
crease of education. 

Our North Sea work grew apace. Vessel after vessel 
was added to the fleet. Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, 
became interested, and besides subscribing personally 
toward the first hospital boat, permitted it to be named 
in her honour. According to custom the buUders had a 
beautiful little model made which Her Majesty agreed 
to accept. It was decided that it should be presented to 
her in Buckingham Palace by the two senior mission 
captains. 

The journey to them was a far more serious under- 
taking than a winter voyage on the Dogger Bank. How- 
ever, arrayed in smart blue suits and new guernseys and 
polished to the last degree, they set out on the eventful 
expedition. On their return every one was as anxious to 
know "how the voyage had turned out" as if they had 



NORTH SEA WORK 105 

been exploring new fishing grounds around the North 
Cape in the White Sea. "Nothing to complain of, boys, 
till just as we had her in the wind's eye to shoot the gear," 
said the senior skipper. "A big swell in knee-breeches 
opened the door and called out our names, when I was 
brought up all standing, for I saw that the peak halliard 
was fast on the port side. The blame thing was too small 
for me to shift over, so I had to leave it. But, believe me, 
she never said a word about it. That's what I call some- 
thing of a lady." 

At this time we had begun two new ventures, an in- 
stitute at Yarmouth for fishermen ashore and a dis- 
pensary vessel to be sent out each spring among the 
thousands of Scotch, Manx, Irish, and French fishermen, 
who carried on the herring and mackerel fishery off the 
south and west coast of Ireland. 

The south Irish spring fishery is wonderfully interest- 
ing. Herring and mackerel are in huge shoals anywhere 
from five to forty miles off the land, and the vessels run 
in and out each day bringing back the catch of the night. 
Each vessel shoots out about two miles of net, while 
some French ones will shoot out five miles. Thus the 
aggregate of nets used would with ease stretch from 
Ireland to New York and back. Yet the undaunted 
herring return year after year to the disastrous rendez- 
vous. The vessels come from all parts. Many are the 
large tan-sailed luggers from the Scottish coasts, their 
sails and hulls marked "B.F." for Banff, "M.E." for 
Montrose, "C.N." for Campbelltown, etc. With these 
come the plucky little Ulster boats from Belfast and 
Larne, Loch Swilling and Loch Foyle; and not a few of 
the hereditary seafaring men from Cornwall, Devon, 
and Dorset. Others also come from Falmouth, Penzance, 
and Exmouth. Besides these are the Irish boats — few 



106 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

enough, alas, for Paddy is not a sailor. A good priest 
had tried to induce his people to share this rich harvest 
by starting a fishery school for boys at Baltimore, where 
net-making and every other branch of the industry was 
taught. It was to little purpose, for I have met men 
hungry on the west coast, who were trying to live on 
potato-raising on that bog land who were graduates of 
Father D.'s school. 

There was one year when we ourselves were trying out 
the trawling in Clew Bay and Blackwood, and getting 
marvellous catches; so much so that I remember one 
small trawler from Grimsby on the east coast of England 
making two thousand dollars in two days' work, while 
the Countess of Z. fund was distributing charity to the 
poverty-stricken men who lived around the bay itself. 
The Government of Ireland also made serious efforts to 
make its people take up the fishery business. About one 
million dollars obtained out of the escheated funds of 
the Church of England in Ireland, when that organiza- 
tion was disestablished by Mr. Gladstone, was used as a 
loan fund which was available for fishermen, resident six 
months, at two per cent interest. They were permitted 
to purchase their own boat and gear for the fishery out 
of the money thus provided. 

While we lay in Durham Harbour at the entrance to 
Waterford Harbour, we met many Cornishmen who were 
temporarily resident there, having come over from Corn- 
wall to qualify for borrowing the money to get boats and 
outfit. During one week in which we were working from 
that port, there were so many saints' days on which the 
Irish crews would not go out fishing, but were having 
good times on the land, that the skippers, who were 
Cornishmen, had to form a crew out of their own num- 
bers and take one of their boats to sea. 



NORTH SEA WORK 107 

One day we had landed on the Arran Islands, and I 
was hunting ferns in the rock crevices, for owing to the 
warmth of the Gulf current the growth is luxuriant. On 
the top of the cliffs about three hundred feet high, I fell 
in with two Irishmen smoking their pipes and sprawling 
on the edge of the precipice. The water below was very- 
deep and they were fishing. I had the fun of seeing dan- 
gling codfish hauled leisurely up all that long distance, and 
if one fell off on the passage, it was amusing to note the 
absolute insouciance of the fishermen, who assured me 
that there were plenty more in the sea. 

It has always been a puzzle to me why so few tourists 
and yachtsmen visit the south and west coast of Ireland. 
Its marvellous wild, rock scenery, its exquisite bays, — 
no other words describe them, — its emerald verdure, 
and its interesting and hospitable people have given 
me, during the spring fishing seasons that I spent on that 
coast, some of the happiest memories of my life. On the 
contrary, most of the yachts hang around the Solent, 
and the piers of Ryde, Cowes, and Southampton, instead 
of the magnificent coast from Queenstown to Donegal 
Cliffs, and from there all along West Scotland to the 
Hebrides. 

About this time our work established a dispensary and 
social centre at Crookhaven, just inside the Fastnet 
Lighthouse, and another in Tralee on the Kerry coast, 
north of Cape Clear. Gatherings for worship and singing 
were also held on Sundays on the boats, for on that day 
neither Scotch, Manx, nor English went fishing. The 
men loved the music, the singing of hymns, and the con- 
versational addresses. Many would take some part in the 
service, and my memories of those gatherings are still 
very pleasant ones. 

On this wild coast calls for help frequently came from 



108 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

the poor settlers as well as from the seafarers. A summons 
coming in one day from the Fastnet Light, we rowed 
out in a small boat to that lovely rock in the Atlantic. 
A heavy sea, however, making landing impossible, we 
caught hold of a buoy, anchored off from the rock, and 
then rowing in almost to the surf, caught a line from the 
high overhanging crane. A few moments later one was 
picked out of the tumbling, tossing boat like a winkle 
out of a shell, by a noose at the end of a line from a crane 
a hundred and fifty feet above, swung perpendicularly 
up into the air, and then round and into a trap-door in 
the side of the lighthouse. On leaving one was swung out 
again in the same fashion, and dangled over the tum- 
bling boat until caught and pulled in by the oarsmen. ^ 
Another day we rowed out nine miles in an Irish craft 
to visit the Skerry Islands, famous for the old Beehive 
Monastery, and the countless nests of gannets and other 
large sea-birds. The cliffs rise to a great height almost 
precipitously, and the ceaseless thunder of the Atlantic 
swell jealously guards any landing. There being no davit 
or crane, we had just to fling ourselves into the sea, and 
climb up as best we could, carrying a line to haul up our 
clothing from the boat and other apparatus after landing, 
while the oarsmen kept her outside the surf. To hold on 
to the slippery rock we needed but little clothing, any- 
how, for it was a slow matter, and the clinging power of 
one's bare toes was essential. The innumerable gannets 
sitting on their nests gave the island the appearance of 
a snowdrift; and we soon had all the eggs that we needed 
lowered by a line. But some of the gulls, of whose eggs 
we wanted specimens also, built so cleverly onto the 
actual faces of the cliffs, that we had to adopt the old 
plan of hanging over the edge and raising the eggs on the 
back of one's foot, which is an exploit not devoid of 



NORTH SEA WORK 109 

excitement. The chief difficulty was, however, with one 
of our number, who literally stuck on the top, being 
unable to descend, at least in a way compatible with 
comfort or safety. The upshot was that he had to be 
blindfolded and helped. 

One of our Council, being connected at this time with 
the Irish Poor-Relief Board and greatly interested in 
the Government efforts to relieve distress in Ireland, 
arranged that we should make a voyage around the 
entire island in one of our vessels, trying the trawling 
grounds ever^^^here, and also the local markets available 
for making our catch remunerative. There has been con- 
siderable activity in these waters of late years, but it 
was practically pioneer work in those days, the fishery 
being almost entirely composed of drift nets and long 
lines. It was supposed that the water was too deep and 
the bottom too uneven and rocky to make trawling 
possible. We had only a sailing vessel of about sixty tons, 
and the old heavy beam trawl, for the other trawl and 
steam fishing boats were then quite in their infancy. The 
quantity and variety of victims that came to our net 
were prodigious, and the cruise has remained as a dream 
in my memory, combined as it was with so many chances 
of helping out one of the most interesting and amiable — 
if not educated — peoples in the world. It happened to 
be a year of potato scarcity; as one friend pointed out, 
there was a surplus of Murphys in the kitchen and a 
scarcity of Murphys in the cellar — "Murphys" being 
another name for that vegetable which is so large a factor 
in Irish economic life. As mentioned before, a fund, called 
the Countess of Z.'s fund, had been established to relieve 
the consequent distress, and while we were fishing in 
Black Sod Bay, the natives around the shore were accept- 
ing all that they could secure. Yet one steam trawler 



110 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

cleared four hundred pounds within a week; and our own 
fine catches, taken in so short a while, made it seem a 
veritable fishermen's paradise for us, who were accus- 
tomed to toil over the long-combed-out and stormy banks 
of the North Sea. The variety of fish taken alone made 
the voyage of absorbing interest, numbering cod, had- 
dock, ling, hake, turbot-, soles, plaice, halibut, whiting, 
crayfish, shark, dog-fish, and many quaint monsters 
unmarketable then, but perfectly edible. Among those 
taken in was the big angler fish, which lives at the 
bottom with his enormous mouth open, dangling an 
attractive-looking bait formed by a long rod growing 
out from his nose, which lures small victims into the 
cavern, whence, as he possesses row upon row of spiky 
teeth which providentially point down his throat, there 
is seldom any returning. 

Among the many memories of that coast which gave 
me a vision of the land question as it affected the people 
in those days, one in particular has always remained 
with me. We had made a big catch in a certain bay, a 
perfectly beautiful inlet. To see if the local fishermen 
could find a market within reach of these fishing grounds, 
with one of the crew, and the fish packed in boxes, we 
sailed up the inlet to the market town of Bell Mullet. 
Being Saturday, we found a market day in progress, and 
buyers, who, encouraged by one of the new Government 
light railways, were able to purchase our fish. That eve- 
ning, however, when halfway home, a squall suddenly 
struck our own lightened boat, which was rigged with 
one large lugsail, and capsized her. By swimming and 
manoeuvring the boat, we made land on the low, muddy 
flats. No house was in sight, and it was not until long 
after dark that we two shivering masses of mud reached 
an isolated cabin in the middle of a patch of the re- 



NORTH SEA WORK 111 

deemed ground right in the centre of a large bog. A 
miserably clad woman greeted us with a warm Irish 
welcome. The house had only one room and accommo- 
dated the hve-stock as well as the family. A fine cow 
stood in one corner; a donkey tied to the foot of the bed 
was patiently looking down into the face of the baby. 
Father was in England harvesting. A couple of pigs^ lay 
under the bed, and the floor space was still further en- 
croached upon by a goodly number of chickens, which 
were encouraged by the warmth of the peat fire. They 
not only thought it their duty to emphasize our welcome, 
but — misled by the firelight — were saluting the still 
far-off dawn. The resultant emotions which we experi- 
enced during the night led us to suggest that we might 
assist toward the erection of a cattle pen. Before leaving, 
however, we were told, "Shiu?e t' rint would be raised in 
the fall," if such signs of prosperity as farm buildings 
greeted the land agent's arrival. 

The mouth of Loch Foyle, one of the most beautiful 
bays in Ireland, gave us a fine return in fish. Especially 
I remember the magnificent turbot which we took off 
the wild shore between the frowning basalt cliffs of the 
Giant's Causeway, and the rough headlands of Loch 
Swilly. We sold our fish in the historic town of London- 
derry, where we saw the old gun Morris Meg, which once 
so successfully roared for King William, still in its place 
on the old battlements. By a packet steamer plying 
to Glasgow, we despatched some of the catch to that 
greedy market. At Loch Foyle there is a good expanse 
of sandy and mud bottom which nurses quite a harvest 
of the sea, though — oddly enough — close by off Rath- 
lin Island is the only water over one hundred fathoms 
deep until the Atlantic Basin is reached. The Irish Sea 
like the North Sea is all shallow water. Crossing to the 



112 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

Isle of Man, we delayed there only a short while, for 
those grounds are well known to the Fleetwood trawlers, 
who supply so much fish to the dense population of 
North Central England. We found little opportunity of 
trawling off the west of Scotland, the ocean's bottom 
being in no way suited to it. On reaching the Western 
Hebrides, however, we were once more among many old 
friends. From Stornaway on the Isle of Lewis alone 
some nine hundred drifters were pursuing the retreating 
armies of herring. 

The German hordes have taught us to thinkKof life 
in large numbers, but were the herring to elect a Kaiser, 
he would dominate in reality an absolutely indestructible 
host. For hundreds of years fishermen of all countries 
have without cessation been pursuing these friends of 
mankind. For centuries these inexhaustible hordes have 
followed their long pathways of the sea, swimming by 
some strange instinct always more or less over the same 
courses — ever with their tireless enemies, both in and 
out of the water, hot foot on their tracks. Sharks, dog- 
fish, wolf-fish, cod, and every fish large enough to swal- 
low them, gulls, divers, auks, and almost every bird of 
the air, to say nothing of the nets set now from steam- 
propelled ships, might well threaten their speedy extermi- 
nation. This is especially true when we remember that 
even their eggs are preyed upon in almost incalculable 
bulk as soon as they are deposited. But phoenix-like they 
continue to reappear in such vast quantities that they 
are still the cheapest food on the market. Such huge 
numbers are caught at one time that they have now and 
again to be used for fertilizer, or dumped overboard into 
the sea. The great bay of Stornaway Harbour was so 
deeply covered in oil from the fish while we lay there, 
that the saihng boats raced to and fro before fine breezes 



NORTH SEA WORK 113 

and yet the wind could not even ripple the surface of the 
sea, as if at last millennial conditions had materialized. 
Many times we saw nets which had caught such quan- 
tities of fish at once that they had sunk to the bottom. 
They were only rescued with great diflSculty, and then 
the fish were so swollen by being drowned in the net that 
it took hours of hard work and delay to shake their now 
distended bodies out again. 

The opportunities for both holding simple religious 
services and rendering medical help from our dispensary 
were numerous, and we thought sufficiently needed to 
call for some sort of permanent effort; so later the So- 
ciety established a small mission room in the harbour. 

Alcohol has always been a menace to Scotch life, 
though their fishermen were singularly free from rioting 
and drunkenness. Indeed, their home-born piety was 
continually a protest to the indulgence of the mixed 
crowd which at that time followed King Henry. Scores 
of times have I seen a humble crew of poor fishermen, 
who themselves owned their small craft, observing the 
I Sunday as if they were in their homes, while the skippers 
of large vessels belonging to others fished all the week 
round at the beck of their absent owners, thinking they 
made more money in that way. 

In 1891 the present Lord Southborough, then Mr. 
Francis Hopwood, and a member of the Mission Board, 
returned from a visit to Canada and Newfoundland. He 
brought before the Council the opportunities for service 
among the fishermen of the northwest Atlantic, and the 
suggestion was handed on to me in the form of a query. 
Would I consider crossing the Atlantic in one of our 
small sailing vessels, and make an inquiry into the 
problem? 

Some of my older friends have thought that my de- 



114 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

cision to go was made under strong religious excitement, 
and in response to some deep-seated conviction that 
material sacrifices or physical discomforts commended 
one to God. I must, however, disclaim all such lofty 
motives. I have always beheved that the Good Samaritan 
went across the road to the wounded man just because 
he wanted to. I do not beUeve that he felt any sacrifice 
or fear in the matter. If he did, I know very well that I 
did not. On the contrary, there is everything about such 
a venture to attract my type of mind, and making prep- 
arations for the long voyage was an unmitigated delight. 

The boat which I selected was ketch-rigged — much 
like a yawl, but more comfortable for lying-to in heavy 
weather, the sail area being more evenly distributed. 
Her freeboard being only three feet, we replaced her 
wooden hatches, which were too large for handling 
patients, by iron ones; and also sheathed her forward 
along the water-line with greenheart to protect her 
planking in ice. For running in high seas we put a large 
square sail forward, tripping the yard along the fore- 
mast, much like a spinnaker boom. Having a screw 
steering gear which took two men to handle quickly 
enough when she yawed and threatened to jibe in a big 
swell, it proved very useful. 

It was not until the spring of 1892 that we were ready 
to start. We had secured a master with a certificate, for 
though I was myself a master mariner, and my mate had 
been in charge of our vessel in the North Sea for many 
years, we had neither of us been across the Atlantic be- 
fore. The skipper was a Comishman, Trevize by name, 
and a martinet on discipline — an entirely new experi- 
ence to a crew of North Sea fishermen. He was so par- 
ticular about everything being just so that quite a few 
days were lost in starting, though well spent as far as 



NORTH SEA WORK 115 

preparedness went. Nothing was wanting when at last, 
in the second week of June, the tugboat let us go, and 
crowds of friends waved us good-bye from the pier-head 
as we passed out with our bunting standing. We had not 
intended to touch land again uuatil it should rise out of 
the western horizon, but off the south coast of Ireland we 
met with heavy seas and head winds, so we ran into 
Crookhaven to visit our colleagues who worked at that 
station. Our old patients in that lonely comer were al- 
most as interested as ourselves in the new venture, and 
many were the good eggs and "meals of greens" which 
they brought down to the ship as parting tokens. Indeed, 
we shrewdly guessed that our "dry" principles alone 
robbed us of more than "one drop o' potheen" whose 
birth the Hght of the moon had witnessed. 

As we were not fortunate in encountering fair winds, 
it was not until the twelfth day that we saw our first ice- 
berg, almost running into it in a heavy fog. The fall in 
the temperature of the sea surface had warned us that 
we were in the cold current, and three or four days of 
dense fog emphasized the fact. As it was midsummer, we 
felt the change keenly, when suddenly on the seventeenth 
day the fog lifted, and a high evergreen-crowned coast- 
line greeted our delighted eyes. A lofty lighthouse on a 
rocky headland enabled us almost immediately to dis- 
cover our exact position. We were just a little north of 
St. John's Harbour, which, being my first landfall across 
the Atlantic, impressed me as a really marvellous feat; 
but what was our surprise as we approached the high 
cliffs which guard the entrance to see dense columns of 
smoke arising, and to feel the offshore wind grow hotter 
and hotter as the pilot tug towed us between the head- 
lands. For the third time in its history the city of St. 
John's was in flames. , 



116 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

^ The heat was fierce when we at last anchored, and had 
the height of the blaze not passed, we should certainly 
have been glad to seek again the cool of our icy friends 
outside. Some ships had even been burned at their 
anchors. We could count thirteen fiercely raging fires 
in various parts of the city, which looked like one vast 
funeral pyre. Only the brick chimneys of the houses 
remained standing blackened and charred. Smoke and 
occasional flame would burst out here and there as the 
fickle eddies of wind, influenced, no doubt, by the heat, 
whirled around as if in sport over the scene of man's dis- 
comfitures. On the hillside stood a solitary house almost 
untouched, which, had there been any reason for its 
being held sacred, might well have served as a demon- 
stration of Heaven's special intervention in its behalf. 
As it was, it seemed to mock the still smouldering wreck 
of the beautiful stone cathedral just beside it. Among 
the ruins in this valley of desolation little groups of men 
darted hither and thither, resembling from the harbour 
nothing so much as tiny black imps gloating over a con- 
genial environment. I hope never again to see the sight 
that might well have suggested Gehenna to a less active 
imagination than Dante's. 

Huts had been erected in open places to shelter the 
homeless; long queues of hungry human beings defiled 
before temporary booths which served out soup and 
other rations. Every nook and corner of house-room left 
was crowded to overfiowing with derelict persons and 
their belongings. The roads to the country, like those 
now in the environs of the towns in northern France, 
were dotted with exiles and belated vehicles, hauling in 
every direction the remnants of household goods. The 
feeling as of a rudely disturbed antheap dominated one's 
mind, and yet, in spite of it all, the hospitality and wel- 



NORTH SEA WORK 117 

come which we as strangers received was as wonderful 
as if we had been a relief ship laden with supplies to re- 
place the immense amount destroyed in the ships and 
stores of the city. Moreover, the cheerfulness of the town 
was amazing. Scarcely a "peep" or "squeal" did we 
hear, and not a single diatribe against the authorities. 
Every one had suffered together. Nor was it due to any 
one's fault. True, the town water-supply had been tem- 
porarily out of commission, some stranger was said to 
have been smoking in the hay loft. Providence had not 
specially intervened to save property, and hence this 
result. Thus to our relief it was a city of hope, not of 
despair, and to our amazement they were able to show 
most kindly interest in problems such as ours which 
seemed so remote at the moment. None of us will ever 
forget their kindness, from the Governor Sir Terence 
O'Brien, and the Prime Minister, Sir William Whiteway, 
to the humblest stevedore on the wharves. 
f I had expected to spend the greater part of our time 
cruising among the fishing schooners out of sight of land 
on the big Banks as we did in the North Sea; but I was 
advised that owing to fog and isolation, each vessel 
working separately and bringing its own catch to market, 
it would be a much more profitable outlay of time, if 
we were to follow the large fleet of over one hundred 
schooners, with some thirty thousand fishermen, women, 
and children which had just sailed North for summer 
work along the coast of Labrador. To better aid us the 
Government provided a pilot free of expense, and their 
splendid Superintendent of Fisheries, Mr. Adolph Niel- 
sen, also accepted the invitation to accompany us, to 
make our experiment more exhaustive and valuable 'by 
a special scientific inquiry into the habits and manner 
of the fish as well as of the fishermen. Naturally a good 



118 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

deal of delay had occurred owing to the unusual con- 
gestion of business which needed immediate attention 
and the unfortunate temporary lack of facilities; but we 
got under way at last, and sailing "down North" some 
four hundred miles and well outside the land, eventually 
ran in on a parallel and made the Labrador coast on the 
4th of August. 

The exhilarating memory of that day is one which will 
die only when we do. A glorious sun shone over an oily 
ocean of cerulean blue, over a hundred towering icebergs 
of every fantastic shape, and flashing all of the colours 
of the rainbow from their gleaming pinnacles as they 
rolled on the long and lazy swell. Birds familiar and 
strange left the dense shoals of rippling fish, over which 
great flocks were hovering and quarrelling in noisy en- 
joyment, to wave us welcome as they swept in joyous 
circles overhead. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE LUBE OF THE LABRADOR 

Twenty years have passed away since that day, and a 
thousand more important affairs which have occurred 
in the meantime have faded from my memory; but still 
its events stand out clear and sharp. The large and lofty 
island, its top covered with green verdure, so wonderful 
a landmark from the sea, its peaks capped with the 
fleecy mist of early morning, rose in a setting of the 
purest azure blue. For the first time I saw the faces of 
its ruddy cHffs, their ledges picked out with the homes 
of myriad birds. Its feet were bathed in the dark, rich 
green of the Atlantic water, edged by the line of pure 
white breakers, where the gigantic swell lazily hurled 
immeasurable mountains of water against its titanic 
bastions, evoking peals of sound like thimder from its 
cavernous recesses — a very riot of magnificence. The 
great schools of whales, noisily slapping the calm surface 
of the sea with their huge tails as in an abandon of joy, 
dived and rose, and at times threw the whole of their 
mighty carcasses right out of water for a bath in the 
glorious morning sunshine. The shoals of fish everywhere 
breaching the water, and the silver streaks which flashed 
beneath our bows as we lazed along, suggested that the 
whole vast ocean'^was too small to hold its riches. 

When we realized that practically no man had ever 
lived there, and few had even seen it, it seemed to over- 
whelm us, coming as we did from the crowded Island of 
our birth, where notices not to trespass haunted even 
the dreams of the average man. 

A serried rank of range upon range of hills, reaching 



120 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

north and south "as far as the eye could see from the 
masthead, was rising above our horizon behind a very 
surfeit of islands, bewildering the minds of men accus- 
tomed to our English and North Sea coast-lines. 

In a ship just the size of the famous Matthew, we had 
gone west, following almost the exact footsteps of the 
great John Cabot when just four hundred years before 
he had fared forth on his famous venture of discovery. 
We seemed now almost able to share the exhilaration 
which only such experiences can afford the human soul, 
and the vast potential resources for the blessing of hu- 
manity of this great land still practically untouched. 

At last we came to anchor among many schooners in 
a wonderful natural harbour called Domino Run, so 
named because the Northern fleets all pass through it on 
their way North and South. Had we been painted scarlet, 
and flown the Black Jack instead of the Red Ensign, we 
could not have attracted more attention. Flags- of greet- 
ing were run up to all mastheads, and boats from all 
sides were soon aboard inquiring into the strange phe- 
nomenon. Our object explained, we soon had calls for a 
doctor, and it has been the experience of almost every 
visitor to the coast from that day to this that he is ex- 
pected to have a knowledge of medicine. 

One impression made on my mind that day undoubt- 
edly influenced all my subsequent actions. Late in the 
evening, when the rush of visitors was largely over, I 
noticed a miserable bunch of boards, serving as a boat, 
with only a dab of tar along its seams, lying motionless 
a little way from us. In it, sitting silent, was a half-clad, 
brown-haired, brown-faced figure. After long hesitation, 
during which time I had been watching him from the 
rail, he sudderily asked: 
"Be you a real doctor?" 




Cape Uivuk 




The Tickle Anchorage 
THE LABRADOR COAST 



THE LUBE OF THE LABRADOR 121 

"That's what I call myself," I replied. 

"Us has n't got no money," he fenced, "but there's a 
very sick man ashore, if so be you'd come and see him." 

A little later he led me to a tiny sod-covered hovel, 
compared with which the Irish cabins were palaces. It 
had one window of odd fragments of glass. The floor was 
of pebbles from the beach; the earth walls were damp 
and chilly. There were half a dozen rude wooden bunks 
built in tiers around the single room, and a group of 
some six neglected children, frightened by our arrival, 
were huddled together in one corner. A very sick man 
was coughing his soul out in the darkness of a lower 
bunk, while a pitiably covered woman gave him cold 
water to sip out of a spoon. There was no furniture ex- 
cept a small stove with an iron pipe leading through a 
hole in the roof. 

My heart sank as I thought of the httle I could do for 
the sufferer in such surroundings. He had pneumonia, a 
high fever, and was probably tubercular. The thought 
of our attractive little hospital on board at once rose to 
my mind; but how could one sail away with this husband 
and father, probably never to bring him back. Advice, 
medicine, a few packages of food were only temporizing. 
The poor mother could never nurse him and tend the 
family. Furthermore, their earning season, "while the 
fish were in," was sUpping away. To pray for the man, 
and with the family, was easy, but scarcely satisfying. 
A hospital and a trained nurse was the only chance for 
this bread-winner — and neither was available. 

I called in a couple of months later as we came South 
before the approach of winter. Snow was already on the 
ground. The man was dead and buried; there was no 
provision whatever for the family, who were destitute, 
except for the hollow mockery of a widow's grant of 



122 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

twenty dollars a year. This, moreover, had to be taken 
up in goods at a truck store, less debts if she owed any. 

Among the nine hundred patients that still show on 
the records of that long-ago voyage, some stand out 
more than others for their pecuUar pathos and their 
utter helplessness. I shall never forget one poor Eskimo. 
In firing a cannon to salute the arrival of the Moravian 
Mission ship, the gim exploded prematurely, blowing off 
both the man's arms below the elbows. He had been lying 
on his back for a fortnight, the pathetic stumps covered 
only with far from sterile rags dipped in cold water. We 
remained some days, and did all we could for his benefit; 
but he too joined the great host that is forever "going 
west," for want of what the world fails to give them. 

It is not given to every member of our profession to 
enjoy the knowledge that he alone stands between the 
helpless and suffering or death, for in civilization mod- 
em amenities have almost annihilated space and time, 
and the sensations of the Yankee at the Court of King 
Arthur are destroyed by the reaKzation of competitors, 
"just as good," even if it often does leave one conscious 
of Hmitations. The successful removal of a molar which 
has given torture for weeks in a dentistless country, 
gains one as much gratitude as the amputation of a limb. 
One mere boy came to me with necrosis of one side of 
his lower jaw due to nothing but neglected toothache. It 
had to be dug out from the new covering of bone which 
had grown up all around it. The whimsical expression of 
his lop-sided face still haunts me. 

Deformities went untreated. The crippled and blind 
halted through life, victims of what "the blessed Lord 
saw best for them." The torture of an ingrowing toe-nail, 
which could be relieved in a few minutes, had incapaci- 
tated one poor father for years. Tuberculosis and rickets 



THE LUBE OF THE LABRADOR 123 

carried on their evil work unchecked. Preventable pov- 
erty was the eflficient handmaid of these two latter 
diseases. 

There was also much social work to be done in con- 
nection with the medical. Education in every one of its 
branches — especially public health — was almost non- 
existent — as were many simple social amenities which 
might have been so easily induced. 

At one village a woman with five children asked us if 
we could marry her to her husband. They had never been 
together when a parson happened along, and they now 
lived in a lonely cove three miles away. This seemed a 
genuine case of distress; and as it happened a parson was 
taking a passage with us, we sent two of our crew over 
in a boat to round up the groom. Apparently he was not 
at all anxious, but being a very small man and she a 
large woman, he discreetly acquiesced. The wedding was 
held on board our ship, every one entering into the spirit 
of the unusual occasion. The main hold was crammed 
with guests, bells were rung and flags flown, guns fired, 
and at night distress rockets were sent up. We kept in 
touch with the happy couple for years, till once more 
they moved away to try their luck elsewhere. 

Obviously the coast offered us work that would not 
be done unless we did it. Here was real need along any 
line on which one could labour, in a section of our own 
Empire, where the people embodied all our best sea tra- 
ditions. They exhibited many of the attractive char- 
acteristics which, even when buried beneath habits and 
customs the outcome of their environment, always en- 
dear men of the sea to the genuine Anglo-Saxon. They 
were uncomplaining, optimistic, splendidly resourceful, 
cheerful and generous — and after all in one sense soap 
and water only makes the outside of the platter clean. 



124 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

I confess that we had greatly enjoyed the adventure 
qua adventure. Mysterious fjords which wound out of 
sight into the fastnesses of unknown mountains, and 
which were entirely uncharted, fairly shouted an in- 
vitation to enter and discover what was round the next 
corner. Islands by the hundred, hitherto never placed 
on any map, challenged one's hydrographic skill. Fam- 
ilies of strange birds, which came swinging seaward as the 
season advanced, suggested a virgin field for hunting. 
Berries and flowering plants, as excellent as they were 
unfamiliar, appealed for exploration. Great boulders 
perched on perilous peaks, torn and twisted strata, with 
here and there raised beaches, and great outcrops of 
black trap-rock piercing through red granite cliffs in 
giant vertical seams — all piqued one's curiosity to know 
the geology of this unknown land. Some stone arrow- 
heads and knives, brought to me by a fisherman, to- 
gether with the memories that the Norse Vikings and 
their competitors on the scroll of discovery made their 
first landfall on this the nearest section of the American 
coast to Europe, excited one's curiosity to know more of 
these shores. The dense growth of evergreen trees abound- 
ing in every river valley, and the exquisite streams with 
trout and salmon and seals attracted one whose famil- 
iarity with sport and forests was inseparably connected 
with notices to trespassers. 

It only wanted an adventure such as we had one day 
while sailing up a fjord on a prosaic professional call, 
when we upset our cutter and had to camp for the night, 
to give spice to our other experiences, and made us wish 
to return another year, better equipped, and with a more 
competent staff. 

I am far from being the only person from the outside 
world who has experienced what Wallace describes as 



THE LURE OP THE LABRADOR 125 

"the Lure of the Labrador." It was a genuine surprise 
to me one morning to find ice on deck — a scale of spark- 
ling crystals most beautifully picking out the water-line 
of our little craft. It was only then that I realized that 
October had come. The days, so full of incident, had 
passed away like ships in the night. Whither away was 
the question? We could not stay even though we felt the 
urgent call to remain. So "Heigho for the southward bar" 
and a visit to St. John's to try and arouse interest in the 
new-discovered problems, before we should once more 
let go our stern lines and be bowling homeward before 
the fall nor' westers to dear old England. 

Home-going craft had generously carried our story 
before us to the city of St. John's. The Board of Trade 
commended our effort. The papers had written of the 
new phenomenon; the politicians had not refrained from 
commendation. His Excellency the Governor made our 
path plain by calling a meeting in Government House, 
where the following resolution was passed: 

"That this meeting, representing the principal mer- 
chants and traders carrying on the fisheries, especially 
on the Labrador coast, and others interested in the wel- 
fare of this colony, desires to tender its warmest thanks 
to the directors of the Deep-Sea Mission for sending 
their hospital ship Albert to visit the settlement on the 
Labrador coast. 

"Much of our fishing industry is carried on in regions 
beyond the ordinary reach of medical aid, or of charity, 
and it is with the deepest sense of gratitude that this 
meeting learns of the amount of medical and surgical 
work done. . . . 

"This meeting also desires to express the hope that 
the directors may see their way to continue the work 
thus begun, and should they do so, they may be assured 



126 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

of the earnest cooperation of all classes of this com- 
munity." 

When at last we said good-bye on om* homeward voy- 
age, our cabins were loaded with generous souvenirs for 
the journey, and no king on his throne was happier than 
every man of the crew of the good ship Albert. 

Our report to the Council in London, followed by the 
resolution sent by the Newfoundland Committee, in- 
duced the Society to repeat the experiment on a larger 
scale the following spring. Thus, with two young doctors, 
Elliott Curwen of Cambridge and Arthur Bobardt 
from Australia, and two nurses. Miss Cawardine and 
Miss Williams, we again set out the following June. 

The voyage was uneventful except that I was nearly 
left behind in mid-Atlantic. While playing cricket on 
deck our last ball went over the side, and I after it, shout- 
ing to the helmsman to tack back. This he did, but I 
failed to cut him off the first time, as he got a bit rattled. 
However, we rescued the ball. « 

We had chosen two islands two hundred miles apart 
for cottage hospitals, one at Battle Harbour, on the 
north side of the entrance of the St. Lawrence (Straits of 
Belle Isle), and the other at Lidian Harbour, out in the 
Atlantic at the mouth of the great Hamilton Lilet. Both 
places were the centres of large fisheries, and were the 
*'bring-ups" for numberless schooners of the Labrador 
fleet on their way North and South. The first, a building 
already haK finished, was donated by a local fishery firm 
by the name of Baine, Johnston and Company. This 
was quickly made habitable, and patients were admitted 
under Dr. Bobardt's care. The second building, as- 
sembled at St. John's, was shipped by the donors, who 
were the owners of the Indian Harbour fishery. Job 
Brothers and Company. Owing to difficulties in landing. 



THE LURE OF THE LABRADOR 127 

this building was not completed and ready for use until 
the following year, so Dr. Curwen took charge of the 
hospital ship Albert, and I cruised as far north as Okkak 
(lat. 57°) in the Princess May, a midget steam launch, 
eight feet wide, with a cook and an engineer. As there 
was no coal obtainable in the North, we used wood, and 
her fire-box being small the amount of cutting entailed 
left a permanent impression on our biceps. 

A friend from Ireland had presented this little boat, 
which I found lying up on the Chester Race-Course, near 
our home on the Sands of Dee. We had repaired her and 
steamed her through the canal into the Mersey, where, 
somewhat to our humiliation, she had been slung up 
onto the deck of an Allan liner for her trans-Atlantic 
passage, as if she were nothing but an extra hand satchel. 
Nor was our pride restored when on her arrival it was 
found that her funnel was missing among the general 
baggage in the hold. We had to wait in St. John's for a 
new one before starting on our trip North. The close of 
the voyage proved a fitting corollary. Li crossing the 
Straits of Belle Isle, the last boat to leave the Labrador, 
we ran short of fuel, and had to bum our cabin-top to 
make the French shore, having also lost our compass 
overboard. Here we delayed repairing and refitting so 
long that the authorities in St. John's became alarmed 
and despatched their mail steamer in search of us. I 
still remember my astonishment, when, on boarding the 
steamer, the Kvely skipper, a very tender-hearted father 
of a family, threw both arms around me with a mighty 
hug and exclaimed, "Thank God, we all thought you 
were gone. A schooner picked up your fiagpole at sea." 
Poor fellow, he was a fine Christian seaman, but only a 
year or two later he perished with his large steamer while 
I still rove this rugged coast. 



128 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

That summer we visited the stations of the Moravian 
Brethren, who were kindness personified to us. Their 
stations, five in number, dated back over a hundred and 
thirty Tyears, yet they had never had a doctor among 
them. It would scarcely be modest for me to protest that 
they were the worse off for that circumstance. Each 
station was well armed with homoeopathic pills, and at 
least those do no harm; while one old German house- 
father had really performed with complete success crani- 
otomy and delivery of a child en morcellement, in the case 
of a colleague's wife. During our stay they gave us plenty 
of work among their Eskimos, and were good enough to 
report most favourably of our work to their home Com- 
mittee. 

As there was no chart of any use for the coast north of 
Hopedale, few if any corrections having been made in 
the topographic efforts of the long late Captain Cook, of 
around-the-world reputation, one of the Brethren, Mr. 
Christopher Schmidt, joined the Princess May to help 
me find their northern stations among the plethora of 
islands which fringe the coast in that vicinity. Never in 
my life had I expected any journey half so wonderful. 
We travelled through endless calm fjords, runs, tickles, 
bays, and straits without ever seeing the open sea, and 
with hardly a ripple on the surface. We passed high 
mountains and lofty cliffs, crossed the mouths of large 
rivers, left groves of spruce and fir and larches on both 
sides of us, and saw endless birds, among them the 
Canada goose, eider duck, surf scoters, and many com- 
moner sea-fowl. As it was both impossible and dangerous 
to proceed after dark, when no longer able to run we 
would go ashore and gather specimens of the abundant 
and beautiful sub-arctic flora, and occasionally capture 
a bird or a dish of trout to help out our diminutive larder. 



THE LURE OF THE LABRADOR 129 

Among the Eskimos I found a great deal of tubercu- 
losis and much eye trouble. Around the Moravian Mission 
stations wooden houses had largely replaced the former 
*'tubiks," or skin tents, which were moved as occasion 
required and so provided for sanitation. These wooden 
huts were undrained, dark and dirty to a remarkable 
degree. No water supply was provided, and the spaces 
between the houses were simply indescribable garbage 
heaps, presided over by innumerable dogs. The average 
life was very short and infant mortality high. The best 
for which we could hope in the way of morals among 
these people was that a natural unmorality was some off- 
set to the existing conditions. The features of the native 
life which appealed most to us were the universal opti- 
mism, the laughing good-nature and contentment, and 
the Sunday cleanliness of the entire congregation which 
swarmed into the chapel service, a welcome respite from 
the perennial dirt of the week days. Moreover, nearly all 
had been taught to read and write in Eskimo, though 
there is no Kterature in that language to read, except 
such books as have been translated by the Moravian 
Brethren. At that time a strict policy of teaching no 
English had been adopted. Words lacking in the lan- 
guage, like *'God," "love," etc., were substituted by 
German words. Nearly every Eskimo counted "ein, 
zwei, drei." In one of my lectures, on returning to Eng- 
land, I mentioned that as the Eskimos had never seen a 
lamb or a sheep either ahve or in a picture, the Moravians, 
in order to offer them an intelHgible and appealing simile, 
had most wisely substituted the kotik, or white seal, for 
the phrase "the Lamb of God." One old lady in my 
audience must have felt that the good Brethren were 
tampering unjustifiably with Holy Writ, for the follow- 
ing summer, from the barrels of clothing sent out to the 



130 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

Labrador, was extracted a dirty, distorted, and much- 
mangled and wholly sorry-looking woolly toy lamb. Its 
raison d'etre was a mystery until we read the legend 
carefully pinned to one dislocated leg, "Sent in order 
that the heathen may know better." 

Their love for music and ability to do part-playing and 
singing also greatly impressed us, and we spent many 
evenings enjoying their brass bands and their Easter and 
Christmas carols. We made some records of these on our 
Edison phonograph, and they were overpowered with joy 
when they heard their own voices coming back to them 
from the machine. The magic lantern also proved exceed- 
ingly popular, and several tried to touch the pictures 
and see if they could not hold them. We were also able 
to show some hastily made lantern slides of themselves, 
and I shall never forget their joyful excitement. The fol- 
lowing season, in giving them some lantern views, we 
chanced to show a slide of an old Eskimo woman who 
had died during the winter. The subsequent commotion 
caused among the "Uttle people" was unintelhgible to 
us until one of the Moravian Brethren explained that 
they thought her spirit had taken visible form and re- 
turned to her own haunts. 

I happened to be in the gardens at Nain when a 
northerly air made it feel chilly and the thermometer 
stood only a little above freezing. A troop of Eskimo 
women came out to cover up the potatoes. Every row of 
potatoes is covered with arched sticks and long strips of 
canvas along them. A huge roll of sacking is kept near 
each row and the whole is drawn over and the potatoes 
are tucked in bed for the night. I could not resist the 
temptation to lift the bedclothes and shake hands and 
say good-night to one of the nearest plants, whereat the 
merry little people went off into convulsions of laughter. 



THE LURE OF THE LABRADOR 131 

At Hopedale there was a large Danish ship with over 
six hundred tons of cargo for the new Moravian buildings. 
The Brethren do not build as we are doing from coast 
material. In order to save time and also to have more 
substantial buildings, they are cut out and built in 
Germany, photographed, and each piece marked. Then 
they are taken to pieces, shipped, and sent out here for 
erection. 

Some years ago in Germany, when the Socialists were 
wearing beards and mustaches, all respectable people 
used to shave. Therefore the missionaries being Germans 
insisted on the Eskimos shaving as they did. The result 
is that at one store at least a stock of ancient razors are 
left on hand, for now neither missionary nor Eskimo 
shaves in the inhospitable climate of this country. A 
small stock of these razors was, therefore, left on my 
account in some graves from which one or two Eskimos 
were good enough to go and get us a few ancient stone 
implements. It is a marvellous thing how superstition 
still clings around the very best of native Christian 
commimities. 

The Moravian Mission is a trading mission. This trad- 
ing policy in some aspects is in its favour. It is unques- 
tionably part of a message of real love to a brother to put 
within his reach at reasonable rates those adjuncts of 
civilized Hfe that help to make less onerous his hard 
lot. Trade, however, is always a diflScult form of charity, 
and the barter system, common to this coast, being! in 
vogue at the Moravian Mission stations also, practically 
every Eskimo was in debt to them. In reality this caused 
a vicious circle, for it encouraged directly the outstand- 
ing fault of the Eskimo, his readiness to leave the morrow 
to care for itself so long as he does not starve to-day. 
Like a race of children, they need the stimulus of neces- 



132 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

sity to make them get out and do their best while the 
opportmiity exists. In the past twenty-six years I have 
made many voyages to one and another of the stations 
of the Brethren, and have^ learned to love them all very 
sincerely as individuals, though their mission poKcies are 
their own and not mine. 

I remember once in Nain the slob ice had already 
made ballicaters and the biting cold of winter so far 
north had set in with all its vigour. There was a heavy 
sea and a gale of wind. One of two boats which had been 
out all day had not come in. The sea was so rough and 
the wind so strong that the occupants of the first boat 
could not face it, and so had run in under the land and 
walked all the way round, towing their boat by a long 
line from the shore. Night came on and the second boat 
had not appeared. Next morning the Nain folk knew that 
some accident must have happened. Some men reported 
that the evening before they had seen through a glass the 
boat trying to beat against the storm, and then disap- 
pear. The Eskimos gathered together to see what could 
be done and then decided that it was kismet — and went 
their way. The following evening a tiny light was seen 
on the far shore of the bay — some one must be alive 
there. There was no food or shelter there, and it was 
obvious that help was needed. The gale was still blowing 
in fury and the sea was as rough as ever, and Eskimos 
and missionaries decided that in their unsea worthy boats 
they could do nothing. There was one dissentient voice 
— Brother Schmidt; and he went and rescued them. One 
was nearly spent. When their boat had capsized, one 
man, a woman, and a lad had been drowned, but two 
men had succeeded in getting into their kajaks and 
floated off when the disaster happened. 

With October came the necessity for returning South, 




ESKIMO GIRLS 



THE LURE OF THE LABRADOR 133 

and the long dark nights spent at the little fishing sta- 
tions as we journeyed from place to place proved all too 
short. The gatherings for lantern meetings, for simple 
services, for spinning yarns, together with medicine and 
such surgery as we could accomplish under the circum- 
stances, made every moment busy and enjoyable. One 
outstanding feature, however, everywhere impressed an 
Englishman — the absolute necessity for some standard 
medium of exchange. Till one has seen the truck system 
at work, its evil effects in enslaving and demorahzing the 
poor are impossible to realize. 

All the length and breadth of the coast, the poorer 
people would show me their "settling up" as they called 
their account, though many never got as far as having 
any "settHng up" given them — so they lived and died 
in debt to their merchant. They never knew the inde- 
pendence of a dollar in their pockets and the consequent 
incentive and value of thrift. 

It was incredible to me that even large concerns like 
the Hudson Bay Company would not pay in cash for 
valuable furs, and that so many dealers in the necessities 
of Hfe should be still able to hold free men in economic 
bondage. It seemed a veritable chapter from "Through 
the Looking Glass," to hear the "grocer" and "haber- 
dasher" talking of "my people," meaning their patrons, 
and holding over them the whip of refusal to sell them 
necessities in their hour of need if at any time they dealt 
with outsiders, however much to their advantage such a 
course might be. 

This fact was first impressed upon me in an odd way. 
Early in the summer an Eskimo had come aboard the 
hospital ship with a bear skin and a few other furs to sell. 
We had not only been delighted with the chance to buy 
them, but had spread them all around the cabin and 



134 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

taken a picture of him in the middle. Later in the season, 
while showing my photograph album to a trader, he had 
suddenly remarked, "Why, what's doing here?" 

"Selling me some beautiful furs," I replied. 

"Oh! was he?" said the man. "I'll make him sing for 
selling the furs for which I supplied him." 

It was no salve to his fretfulness when I assured him 
that I had paid in good English gold, and that his 
"dealer" would be as honest with the money as the sys- 
tem had made him. But the trader knew that the truck 
system creates slippery, tricky men; and the fisherman 
openly declares war on the merchant, making the most 
of his few opportunities to outwit his opponent. 

A few years later a man brought a silver fox skin 
aboard my ship, just such a one as I had been requested 
by an English lady to secure for her. As fulfilling such 
a request would involve me in hostilities (which, how- 
ever, I do not think were useless), I asked the man, who 
was wretchedly poor, if he owed the skin to the trader. 

"I am in debt," he replied, "but they will only allow 
me eight dollars off my account for this skin, and I want 
to buy some food." 

"Very well," I answered. "If you will promise to go 
at once and pay eight dollars off your debt, I will give 
you eight gold sovereigns for this skin." 

To this he agreed, and faithfully carried out the agree- 
ment — while the English lady scored a bargain, and I 
a very black mark in the books of my friend the trader. 

On another occasion my little steamer had tempora- 
rily broken down, and to save time I had journeyed on 
in the jolly-boat, leaving the cook to steer the vessel after 
me. I wanted to visit a very poor family, one of whose 
eight children I had taken to hospital for bone tuber- 
culosis the previous year, and to whom the Mission had 



THE LURE OF THE LABRADOR 135 

made a liberal grant of warm clothing. As tlie steamer 
had not come along by night, I had to sleep in the tiny 
one-roomed shack which served as a home. True, since 
it stood on the edge of the forest, there was little excuse 
that it was no larger; but the father, a most excellent, 
honest, and faithful worker, was obviously discouraged. 
He had not nearly enough proper food for his family; 
clothing was even more at a discount; tools with which 
to work were almost as lacking as in a cave man's dwell- 
ing; the whole family was going to pieces from sheer dis- 
couragement. The previous winter on the opposite bank 
of the same river, called Big River, a neighbour had in 
desperation sent his wife and eldest boy out of the house, 
killed his young family, and then shot himself. 

When night came five of the children huddled together 
for warmth in one bed, and the parents and balance of 
the family in the other. I slept on the floor near the door 
in my sleeping-bag, with my nose glued to the crack to 
get a breath of God's cold air, in spite of the need for 
warmth — for not a blanket did the house possess. When 
I asked, a little hurt, where were the blankets which we 
had sent last year, the mother somewhat indignantly 
pointed to various trousers and coats which betrayed their 
final resting-place, and remarked, "If you'se had five lads 
all trying to get under one covering to onct. Doctor, you 'd 
soon know what would happen to that blanket." 

Early in the morning I made a boiling of cocoa, and 
took the two elder boys out for a seal hunt while waiting 
for my steamer. I was just in time to see one boy carefully 
upset his mug of cocoa, when he thought I was not look- 
ing, and replace it with cold spring water. "I 'lows I'se 
not accustomed to no sweetness" was his simple ex- 
planation. It was raw and damp as we rowed into the 
estuary at sunrise in search of the seals. I was chilly even 



136 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

in a well-lined leather coat. But the two shock-headed 
boys, clad in ancient cotton shirts, and with what had 
once been only cotton overall jackets, were as jolly as 
crickets, and apparently almost unduly warm. The 
Labrador has taught me one truth, which as a physician 
I never forget, that is, coddling is the terrible menace of 
civilization, and "to endure hardness" is the best prep- 
aration for a "good soldier." On leaving, I promised to 
send to those boys, whose contentment and cheerfulness 
greatly endeared them to me, a dozen good fox traps in 
order to give them a chance for the coming winter. Such 
a gift as those old iron rat traps seemed in their eyes! 
When at last they arrived, and were really their own 
possessions, no prince could have been prouder than 
they. The next summer as I steamed North, we called in 

at D B 's house. The same famine in the land 

seemed to prevail; the same lack of apparently every- 
thing which I should have wanted. But the old infective 
smile was still presented with an almost religious cere- 
monial, and my friend produced from his box a real 
silver fox skin. "I kept it for you'se, Doctor," he said, 
"though us hadn't ne'er a bit int' house. I know'd 
you'd do better 'n we with he." 

I promised to try, and on my way called in at some 
northern islands where my friend. Captain Bartlett, 
father of the celebrated " Captain Bob " of North Pole 
fame, carried on a summer trade and fishery. He himself 
was a great seal and cod fisherman, and a man known 
for his generous sympathy for others. 

"Do your best for me. Captain Will," I asked as I 
handed over the skin — and on coming South I found a 

complete winter diet laid out for me to take to D 

B 's Httle house. It was a veritable full load for the 

small carrying capacity of my little craft. 



THE LURE OF THE LABRADOR 137 

When we arrived at the house on the promontory, 
however, it was locked up and the family gone. They 
were off jBshing on the outer islands, so all we could do 
was to break in the door, pile up the things inside, bar 
it up again, aflSxing a notice warning off bears, dogs, 
and all poachers, and advising Dick that it was the price 
of his pelt. In the note we also told him to put all the 
fur he caught the following winter in a barrel and "sit 
on it" till we came along, if he wanted a chance to get 
ahead. This he did almost literally. We ourselves took 
his barrel to the nearest cash buyer, and ordered for him 
goods for cash in St. John's to the full amount realized. 
The fur brought more than his needs, and he was able to 
help out neighbours by reselling at cash prices. This he 
did till the day of his death, when he left me, as his ex- 
ecutor, with a couple of hundred good dollars in cash to 
divide among his children. 

It was experiments like this which led me in later years 
to start the small cooperative distributive stores, in spite 
of the knowledge of the opposition and criticism it would 
involve. How can one preach the gospel of love to a 
hungry people by sermons, or a gospel of healing to under- 
fed children by pills, while one feels that practical teach- 
ing in home economics is what one would most wish if in 
their position.? The more broad-minded critics them- 
selves privately acknowledged this to me. One day a 
Northern furrier, an excellent and more intelligent man 
than ordinary, came to me as a magistrate to insist that 
a trading company keep its bargain by paying him in 
cash for a valuable fox skin. They were trying to compel 
him to take flour and supplies from them at prices far in 
excess of those at which he could purchase the goods in 
St. John's, via the mail steamer. 

When asked to act as a justice of the peace for the 



138 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

Colony, I had thought it my duty to accept the respon- 
sibiHty. Already it had led me into a good deal of trouble. 
But that I should be forced to seize the large store of a 
company, and threaten an auction of goods for payment, 
without even a poHceman to back me up, had never 
entered my mind. It was, however, exactly what I now 
felt called upon to do. To my intense surprise and satis- 
faction the trader immediately turned round and said: 
"You are quite right. The money shall be paid at once. 
The truck system is a mistaken policy, and loses us many 
customers." It was Saturday night. We had decided to 
have a service for the fishermen the next day, but had 
no place in which to gather. Therefore, after we had 
settled the business I took my pluck in my hands, and 
said: 

"It's Sunday to-morrow. Would you lend us your big 
room for prayers in the morning.?" 

"Why, certainly," he replied; and he was present 
himself and sang as heartily as any man in the meeting. 
Nor did he lose a good customer on account of his open- 
mindedness. 



I 



CHAPTER VII 

THE PEOPLE OF LABRADOR 

Since the publication of the book "Labrador, the Coun- 
try and the People," the means of transportation to the 
coast have been so improved that each year brings us 
an increasing number of visitors to enjoy the attractions 
of this sub-arctic land. So many misconceptions have 
arisen, however, as to the country and its inhabitants, 
and one is so often misrepresented as distorting condi- 
tions, that it seems wise at this point to try and answer 
a few questions which are so familiar to us who live on 
the coast as to appear almost negligible. 

The east coast of Labrador belongs to Newfoundland, 
and is not part of the territory of Canada, although the 
ill-defined boundary between the two possessions has 
given rise to many misunderstandings. Newfoundland is 
an autonomous government, having its own Governor 
sent out from England, Prime Minister, and Houses of 
Parliament in the city of St. John's. Instead of being a 
province of Canada, as is often supposed, arid an arrange- 
ment which some of us firmly believe would result in the 
ultimate good of the Newfoundlanders, it stands in the 
same relationship to England as does the great Dominion 
herself. Labrador is owned by Newfoundland, so that 
legally the Labradormen are Newfoundlanders, though 
they have no representation in the Newfoundland Gov- 
ernment. At Blanc Sablon, on the north coast in the 
Straits of Belle Isle, the Canadian Labrador begins, so 
far as the coast-line is concerned. The hinterland of the 
Province of Ungava is also a Canadian possession. 

The original natives of the Labrador were Eskimos 



140 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

and bands of roving Indians. The ethnologist would find 
fruitful opportunities in the country. The Eskimos, one 
of the most interesting of primitive races, have still a 
firm foothold in the North — chiefly around the five 
stations of the Moravian Brethren, upon whose heroic 
work I need not now dilate. The Montaignais Indians 
roam the interior. They are a branch of the ancient 
Algonquin race who held North America as far west as 
the Rockies. They are the hereditary foes of the Eskimos, 
whole settlements of whom they have more than once 
exterminated. Gradually, with the influx of white settlers 
from Devon and Dorset, from Scotland and France, the 
"Innuits" were driven farther and farther north, until 
there are only some fifteen hundred of them remaining 
to-day. Among them the Moravians have been working 
for the past hundred and thirty-five years. A few bands 
of Indians still continue to rove the interior, occasionally 
coming out to the coast to dispose of their furs, and ob- 
tain such meagre supplies as their mode of Hfe requires. 
The balance of the inhabitants of the country are white 
men of our own blood and religion — men of the sea and 
dear to the Anglo-Saxon heart. 

During the past years it has been the experience of 
many of my colleagues, as well as myself, that as soon as 
one mentions the fact that part of our work is done on 
the north shore of Newfoundland, one's audience loses 
interest, and there arises the question: "But Newfound- 
land is a prosperous island. Why is it necessary to carry 
on a charitable enterprise there?" 

There is a sharp demarcation between main or south- 
ern Newfoundland and the long finger of land jutting 
northward, which at Cape Bauld sphts the polar current, 
so that the shores of the narrow peninsula are contin- 
uously bathed in icy waters. The country is swept by 



THE PEOPLE OF LABRADOR 141 

biting winds, and often for weeks enveloped in a chilly 
and dripping blanket of fog. The climate at the north end 
of the northward-pointing finger is more severe than on 
the Labrador side of the Straits. Indeed, my friend, Mr. 
George Ford, for twenty-seven years factor of the Hudson 
Bay Company at Nakvak, told me that even in the ex- 
treme north of Labrador he never really knew what cold 
was until he underwent the penetrating experience of a 
winter at St. Anthony. The Lapp reindeer herders whom 
we brought over from Lapland, a country lying well 
north of the Arctic Circle, after spending a winter near 
St. Anthony, told me that they had never felt anything 
like that kind of cold, and that they really could not put 
up with it! The climate of the actual Labrador is clear, 
cold, and still, with a greater proportion of sunshine than 
the northern peninsula of Newfoundland. As a matter of 
fact, our station at St. Anthony is farther north and 
farther east than two of our hospitals on the Labrador 
side of the Straits of Belle Isle. Along that north side the 
gardens of the people are so good that their produce 
affords a valuable addition to the diet — but not so here. 
The dominant industry of the whole Colony is its fish- 
eries — the ever-recurrent pursuit of the luckless cod, 
salmon, herring, halibut, and lobster in summer, and the 
seal fishery in the month of March. It is increasingly dif- 
ficult to overestimate the importance, not merely to the 
British Empire, but to the entire world, of the invaluable 
food-supply procured by the hardy fishermen of these 
northern waters. Only the other day the captain of a 
patrol boat told me that he had just come over from 
service on the North Sea, and in his opinion it would be 
years before those waters could again be fished, owing to 
the immense numbers of still active mines which would 
render such an attempt disproportionately hazardous. 



142 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

From this point of view, if from no other more disinter- 
ested angle, we owe a great and continuous debt to the 
splendid people of Britain's oldest colony. It was among 
these white fishermen that I came out to work primarily, 
the floating population which every summer, some twenty 
thousand strong, visits the coasts of Labrador; and later 
including the white resident settlers of the Labrador and 
North Newfoundland coasts as well. 

The conditions prevailing among some of the people 
at the north end of Newfoundland and of Labrador itself 
should not be confused with those of their neighbours to 
the southward. Chronic poverty is, however, very far 
from being universally prevalent in the northern district. 
Some of the fishermen lead a comfortable, happy, and 
prosperous life; but my old diaries, as well as my present 
observations, furnish all too many instances in which 
families exist well within the danger-line of poverty, 
ignorance, and starvation. 

The privations which the inhabitants of the French or 
Treaty shore and of Labrador have had to undergo, and 
their isolation from so many of the benefits of civilization, 
have had varying effects on the residents of the coast to- 
day. While a resourceful and kindly, hardy and hospitable 
people have been developed, yet one sometimes wonders 
exactly into what era an inhabitant of say the planet 
Mars would place our section of the North Country if he 
were to alight here some crisp morning in one of his un- 
earthly machines. For we are a reactionary people in 
matters of religion and education; and our very "speech 
betrays us," belonging as so many of its expressions do 
to the days when the Pilgrims went up to Canterbury, 
or a certain Tinker wrote of another and more distant 
pilgrimage to the City of Zion. 

The people are, naturally, Christians of a devout and 



THE PEOPLE OF LABRADOR 143 

simple faith. The superstitions still found among them 
are attributable to the remoteness of the country from 
the current of the world's thought, the natural tendency 
of all seafaring people, and the fact that the days when 
the forbears of these fishermen left "Merrie England" 
to seek a living by the harvest of the sea, and finally set- 
tled on these rocky shores, were those when witches 
and hobgoblins and charms and amulets were accepted 
beliefs. 

Nevertheless, to-day as a medical man one is startled 
to see a fox's or wolf's head suspended by a cord from 
the centre, and to learn that it will always twist the way 
from which the wind is going to blow. One man had a 
barometer of this kind hanging from his roof, and ex- 
plained that the peculiar fact was due to the nature of 
the animals, which in life always went to windward of 
others; but if you had a seal's head similarly suspended, 
it would turn from the wind, owing to the timid character 
of that creature. Moreover, it surprises one to be assured, 
on the irrefutable and quite unquestioned authority of 
"old Aunt Anne Sweetapple," that aged cats always 
become playful before a gale of wind comes on. 

"I never gets sea boils," one old chap told me the 
other day. 

"How is that.?" I asked. 

"Oh! I always cuts my nails on a Monday, so I never 
has any." 

There is a great belief in fairies on the coast. A man 
came to me once to cure what he was determined to be- 
lieve was a balsam on his baby's nose. The birthmark to 
him resembled that tree. More than one had given cur- 
rency if not credence to the belief that the reason why 
the bull's-eye was so hard to hit in one of our running 
deer rifle matches was that we had previously charmed 



144 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

it. If a woman sees a hare without cutting out and keep- 
ing a portion of the dress she is then wearing, her child 
will be born with a hare-lip. 

When stripping a patient for examination, I noticed 
that he removed from his neck what appeared to be a 
very large scapular. I asked him what it could be. It was 
a haddock's fin-bone — a charm against rheumatism. 
The peculiarity of the fin consists in the fact that the fish 
must be taken from the water and the fin cut out before 
the animal touches anything whatever, especially the 
boat. Any one who has seen a trawl hauled knows how 
diflScult a task this would be, with the jumping, squirm- 
ing fish to cope with. 

Protestant and Catholic alike often sew up bits of 
paper, with prayers written on them, in little sacks that 
are worn around the neck as an amulet; and green 
worsted tied around the wrist is reported to be a never- 
failing cure for hemorrhage. 

Every summer some twenty thousand fishermen travel 
"down North" in schooners, as soon as ever the ice 
breaks sufl&ciently to allow them to get along. They are 
the " Labrador fishermen," and they come from South 
Newfoundland, from Nova Scotia, from Gloucester, and 
even Boston. Some Newfoundlanders take their families 
down and leave them in summer tilts on the land near the 
fishing grounds during the season. When fall comes they 
pick them up again and start for their winter homes 
"in the South," leaving only a few hundreds of scattered 
"Liveyeres" in possession of the Labrador. 

We were much surprised one day to notice a family 
moving their house in the middle of the fishing season, 
especially when we learned that the reason was that a 
spirit had appropriated their dwelling. 

Stephen Leacock would have obtained much valuable 



THE PEOPLE OF LABRADOR 145 

data for his essay on "How to Become a Doctor" if he 
had ever chanced to sail along "the lonely Labrador." 
In a certain village one is confidently told of a cure for 
asthma, as simple as it is infalHble. It consists merely of 
taking the tips of all one's finger-nails, carefully allowed 
to grow long, and cutting them off with sharp scissors. 
In another section a powder known as "Dragon's 
Blood" is very generally used as a plaster. It appears 
quite inert and harmless. A little farther south along the 
coast is a baby suffering from ophthalmia. The doctor 
has only been called in because blowing sugar in its eyes 
has failed to cure it. 

A colleague of mine was visiting on his winter rounds 
in a delightful village some forty miles south of St. 
Anthony Hospital. The "swiles" (seals) had struck in, 
and all hands were out on the ice, eager to capture their 
share of these valuable animals. But snow-blindness had 
incontinently attacked the men, and had rendered them 
utterly unable to profit by their good fortune. The doc- 
tor's clinic was long and busy that night. The following 
morning he was, however, amazed to see many of his 
erstwhile patients wending their way seawards, each 
with one eye treated on his prescription, but the other 
(for safety's sake) doctored after the long-accepted 
methods of the talent of the village — tansy poultices 
and sugar being the acknowledged favourites. The con- 
sensus of opinion obviously was that the stakes were too 
high for a man to offer up both eyes on the altar of 
modern medicine. 

In the course of many years' practice the methods for 
the treatment and extraction of offending molars which 
have come to my attention are numerous, but none can 
claim a' more prompt result than the following: First you 
attach a stout, fine fish-line firmly to the tooth. Next 



146 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

you lash the other end to the latch of the door — we do 
not use knobs in this country. You then make the patient 
stand back till there is a nice tension on the line, when 
suddenly you make a feint as if to strike him in the eye. 
Forgetful of the line, he leaps back to avoid the blow. 
Result, painless extraction of the tooth, which should be 
foxmd hanging to the latch. 

Although there have been clergyman of the Church of 
England and Methodist denominations on the coast for 
many years past — devoted and self-sacrificing men who 
have done most unselfish work — still, their visits must 
be infrequent. One of them told me in North Newfound- 
land that once, when he happened to pass through a 
little village with his dog team on his way South, the man 
of one house ran out and asked him to come in. "Sorry 
I have no time," he replied. "Well, just come in at the 
front door and out at the back, so we can say that a 
minister has been in the house," the fisherman answered. 

Even to-day, to the least fastidious, the conditions of 
travel leave much to be desired. The coastal steamers 
are packed far beyond their sleeping or sitting capacity. 
On the upper deck of the best of these boats I recall that 
there are two benches, each to accommodate four people. 
The steamer often carries three hundred in the crowded 
season of the fall of the year. One retires at night under 
the misapprehension that the following morning will find 
these seats still available. On ascending the companion- 
way, however, one's gaze is met by a heterogeneous col- 
lection of impedimenta. The benches are buried as ir- 
retrievably as if they "had been carried into the midst 
of the sea." Almost anything may have been piled on 
them, from bales of hay — among which my wife once 
sat for two days — to the nucleus of a chicken farm, des- 
tined, let us say, for the Rogues' Roost Bight. 



THE PEOPLE OF LABRADOR 147 

As the sturdy little steamer noses her way into some 
picturesque harbour and blows a lusty warning of her 
approach, small boats are seen putting off from the shore 
and rowing or sculling toward her with almost indecorous 
rapidity. Lean over the rail for a minute with me, and 
watch the freight being unloaded into one of these bob- 
bing little craft. The hatch of the steamer is opened, a 
most unmusical winch commences operations — and a 
sewing machine emerges de profundis. This is swung 
giddily out over the sea by the crane and dropped on the 
thwarts of the waiting pimt. One shudders to think of 
the probably fatal shock received by the vertebrae of that 
machine. One's sympathies, however, are almost imme- 
diately enlisted in the interest and fortunes of a young 
and voicefuJ pig, which, poised in the blue, unwillingly 
experiences for the moment the fate of the coffin of the 
Prophet. Great shouting ensues as a baby is carried down 
the ship's ladder and deposited in the rocking boat. A 
bag of beans, of the variety known as "haricot," is the 
next candidate. A small hole has been torn in a corner of 
the burlap sack, out of which trickles a white and omin- 
ous stream. The last article to join the galaxy is a tub of 
butter. By a sHght mischance the tub has "burst abroad," 
and the butter, a golden and gleaming mass, — with un- 
expected consideration having escaped the ministrations 
of the winch, — is passed from one pair of fishy hands 
to another, till it finds a resting-place by the side of the 
now quiescent pig. 

We pass out into the open again, bound for the next 
port of call. If the weather chances to be "dirty," the 
sufferers from mal-de-mer lie about on every available 
spot, be it floor or bench, and over these prostrate forms 
must one jump as one descends to the dining-saloon for 
lunch. It may be merely due to the special keenness of 



148 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

my professional sense, but the apparent proportion of 
the halt, lame, and blind who frequent these steamers 
appears out of all relation to the total population of the 
coast. Across the table is a man with an enormous white 
rag swathing his thumb. The woman next him looks out 
on a blue and altered world from behind a bandaged eye. 
Beside one sits a young fisherman, tenderly nursing his 
left lower jaw, his enjoyment of the fact that his appetite 
is unimpaired by the vagaries of the North Atlantic 
tempered by an unremitting toothache. 

But the cheerful kindliness and capability of the cap- 
tain, the crew, and the passengers, on whatever boat you 
may chance to travel, pervades the whole ship like an 
atmosphere, and makes one forget any slight discomfort 
in a justifiable pride that as an Anglo-Saxon one can 
claim kinship to these "Vikings of to-day." 

Life is hard in White Bay. An outsider visiting there in 
the spring of the year would come to the conclusion that 
if nothing further can be done for these people to make 
a more generous living, they should be encouraged to go 
elsewhere. The number of cases of tubercle, ansemia, and 
dyspepsia, of beri-beri and scurvy, all largely attribut- 
able to poverty of diet, is very great; and the relative 
poverty, even compared with that of the countries 
which I have been privileged to visit, is piteous. The so- 
lution of such a problem does not, however, lie in re- 
moving a people from their environment, but in trying 
to make the environment more fit for human habitation. 

The hospitality of the people is unstinted and beauti- 
ful. They will turn out of their beds at any time to make 
a stranger comfortable, and offer him their last crust into 
the bargain, without ever expecting or asking a penny of 
recompense. But here, as all the world over, the sublime 
and the ridiculous go hand in hand. On one of my dog 



THE PEOPLE OP LABRADOR 149 

trips the first winter which I spent at St. Anthony, the 
bench on which I slept was the top of the box used for 
hens. This would have made little difference to me, but 
unfortunately it contained a youthful and vigorous 
rooster, which, mistaking the arrival of so many visitors 
for some strange herald of morning, proceeded every 
half -hour to salute it with premature and misdirected 
zeal, utterly incompatible with imbroken repose just 
above his head. It was possible, without moving one's 
limbs much, to reach through the bars and suggest bet- 
ter things to him; but owing to the inequality which 
exists in most things, one invariably captured a drowsy 
hen, while the more active offender eluded one with 
ease. Lighting matches to differentiate species under such 
exceptional circumstances in the pursuit of knowledge 
was quite out of the question. 

A visit to one house on the French shore I shall not 
easily forget. The poor lad of sixteen years had hip dis- 
ease, and lay dying. The indescribable dirt I cannot here 
picture. The bed, the house, and everything in it were 
full of vermin, and the poor boy had not been washed 
since he took to bed three or four months before. With 
the help of a clergyman who was travelling with me 
at the time, the lad was chloroformed and washed. We 
then ordered the bedding to be burned, provided him 
with fresh garments, and put him into a clean bed. The 
people's explanation was that he was in too much pain 
to be touched, and so they could do nothing. We 
cleansed and drained his wounds and left what we could 
for him. Had he not been so far gone, we should have 
taken him to the hospital, but I feared that he would 
not survive the journey. 

Although at the time it often seemed an unnecessary 
expenditure of effort in an already overcrowded day. 



150 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

one now values the records of the early days of one's 
life on the coast. In my notebook for 1895 I find the 
following: "The desolation of Labrador at this time 
is easy to miderstand. No Newfomidlanders were left 
north of us; not a vessel in sight anywhere. The 
ground was all under snow, and everything caught over 
with ice except the sea. I think that I must describe 
one house, for it seems a marvel that any man could 
live in it all winter, much less women and children. 
It was ten feet by twenty, one storey high, made of mud 
and boards, with half a partition to divide bedroom 
from the sitting-room kitchen. If one adds a small 
porch filled with dirty, half-starved dogs, and refuse 
of every kind, an ancient and dilapidated stove in the 
sitting part of the house, two wooden benches against 
the walls, a fixed rude table, some shelves nailed to the 
wall, and two boarded-up beds, one has a fairly accu- 
rate description of the furnishings. Inside were four- 
teen persons, sleeping there, at any rate for a night or 
two. The ordinary regular family of a man and wife and 
four girls was to be increased this winter by the man's 
brother, his wife, and four boys from twelve months to 
seven years of age. His brother had 'handy enough 
flour,' but no tea or molasses. The owner was looking 
after Newfoundland Rooms, for which he got flour, tea, 
molasses, and firewood for the winter. The people as- 
sure me that one man, who was aboard us last fall just 
as we were going South, starved to death, and many 
more were just able to hold out till spring. The man, 
they tell me, ate his only dog as his last resource." 

I sent one day a barrel of flour and some molasses 
to a poor widow with seven children at Stag Islands. 
She was starving even in summer. She was just eating 
fish, which she and her eldest girl caught, and drinking 



THE PEOPLE OF LABRADOR 151 

water — no flour, no tea, nothing. Two winters be- 
fore she and her eldest girl sawed up three thousand 
feet of planking to keep the wolf from the little ones. 
The girl managed the boat and fished in summer, drove 
the dogs and komatik and did the shooting for which 
they could afford powder in winter. 

A man, having failed to catch a single salmon be- 
yond what he was forced to eat, left in his little boat 
to row down to the Inlet to try for codfish. To get a 
meal — breakfast — and a Httle flour to sustain Hf e 
on the way, he had to sell his anchor before he left. 

The life of the sea, with all its attractions, is at best 
a hazardous calling, and it speaks loud in the praise 
of the capacity and simple faith of our people that 
in the midst of a trying and often perilous environ- 
ment, they retain so quiet and kindly a temper of mind. 
During my voyage to the seal fishery I recall that one 
day at three o'clock the men were all called in. Four 
were missing. We did not find them till we had been 
steaming for an hour and a half. They were caught 
on pans some mile or so apart in couples, and were in 
prison. We were a Kttle anxious about them, but the 
only remark which I heard, when at last they came 
aboard, was, "Leave the key of your box the next time, 
Ned." 

To those who claim that Labrador is a land of plenty 
I would offer the following incident in refutation. At 
Holton on a certain Sunday morning the leader of the 
church services came aboard the hospital steamer and 
asked me for a Bible. Some sacrilegious pigs which 
had been brought down to fatten on the fish, driven 
to the verge of starvation by the scarcity of that arti- 
cle, had broken into the church illicitly one night, and 
not only destroyed the cloth, but had actually torn up 



152 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

and eaten the Bible. In reply to inquiry I gave it as 
my opinion that it would be no sin to eat the pork of 
,the erring quadrupeds. 

Once when I was cruising on the North Labrador 
coast I anchored one day between two desolate islands 
some distance out in the Atlantic, a locality which 
in those days was frequented by many fishing craft. 
My anchors were scarcely down when a boat from a 
small Welsh brigantine came aboard, and asked me to 
go at once and see a dying girl. She proved to be the 
only woman among a host of men, and was servant 
in one of the tiny summer fishing huts, cooking and 
mending for the men, and helping with the fish when re- 
quired. I found her in a rude bunk in a dark corner 
of the shack. She was almost eighteen, and even by 
the dim light of my lantern and in contrast with the 
sordid surroundings, I could see that she was very 
pretty. A brief examination convinced me that she was 
dying. The tender-hearted old captain, whose aid had 
been called in as the only man with a doctor's box and 
therefore felt to be better qualified to use it than 
others, was heart-broken. He had pronounced the case 
to be typhoid, to be dangerous and contagious, and had 
wisely ordered the fishermen, who were handling food 
for human consumption, to leave him to deal with the 
case alone. He told me at once that he had limited 
his attentions to feeding her, and that though help- 
less for over a fortnight, and at times unconscious, the 
patient had not once been washed or the bed changed. 
The result, even with my experience, appalled me. 
But while there is life in a young patient there is al- 
ways hope, and we at once set to work on our Augean 
task. By the strangest coincidence it was an inky dark 
night outside, with a low fog hanging over the water. 



THE PEOPLE OF LABRADOR 153 

and the big trap boat, with a crew of some six men, 
among them the skipper's sons, had been missing 
since morning. The skipper had stayed home out of 
sympathy for his servant girl, and his mind was torn 
asunder by the anxiety for the girl and his fear for his 
boys. 

When night fell, the old captain and I were through 
with the hardest part of our work. We had new bed- 
ding on the bed and the patient clean and sleeping 
quietly. Still the boat and its precious complement 
did not come. Every few minutes the skipper would 
go out and listen, and stare into the darkness. The 
girl's heart suddenly failed, and about midnight her 
spirit left this world. The captain and I decided that 
the best thing to do was to burn everything — and in 
order to avoid publicity to do it at once. So having 
laboriously carried it all out onto the edge of the cliff, 
we set a light to the pile and were rewarded with a 
bonfire which would have made many a Guy Fawkes 
celebration. Quite unintentionally we were sending out 
great streams of light into the darkness over the waters 
away down below us, and actually giving the longed-for 
signal to the missing boat. Her crew worked their way 
in the fog to life and safety by means of the blazing and 
poor discarded "properties" of the soul preceding us to 
our last port. 

Although our work has lain almost entirely among 
the white population of the Labrador and North New- 
foundland coasts, still it has been our privilege occa- 
sionally to come in contact with the native races, and 
to render them such ^services, medical or otherwise, as 
lay within our power. Our doctor at Harrington on the 
Canadian Labrador is appointed by the Canadian Gov- 
ernment as Indian Agent. 



154 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

Once, when my own boat was anchored in Davis In- 
let, a band of roving Indians had come to the post for 
barter and suppHes. Our steamer was a source of great 
interest to them. Our steam whistle they would gladly 
have purchased, after they had mastered their first 
fears. At night we showed them some distress rockets 
and some red and blue port flares. The way those In- 
dians fled from the port flares was really amusing, and 
no one enjoyed it more than they did, for the shouting 
and laughter, after they had picked themselves out of 
the scuppers where they had been rolling on top of one 
another, wakened the very hills with their echoes. Next 
morning one lonely-looking brave came on board, and 
explained to me by signs and grunts that during the 
entertainment a white counter, or Hudson Bay dollar, 
had rolled out of the lining of his hat into our wood- 
pile. An elaborate search failed to reveal its where- 
abouts, but as there was no reason to doubt, him, I 
decided to make up the loss to him out of our clothes- 
bag. Fortunately a gorgeous purple rowing blazer came 
readily to hand, and with this and a helmet, both of which 
he put on at once, the poor fellow was more than satis- 
fied. Indeed, on the wharf he was the envy of the whole 
band. 

At night they slept in the bunkhouse, and they pre- 
sented a sight which one is not Kkely to forget — es- 
pecially one lying on his back on the table, with his 
arms extended and his head hanging hstlessly over the 
edge. One' felt sorely tempted to put a pin into him 
to see if he really were alive, but we decided to abstain 
for prudential reasons. 

We had among the garments on board three not ex- 
actly suited to the white settlers, so I told the agent 
to let the Indians have a rifle shooting match for them. 



THE PEOPLE OF LABRADOR 155 

They were a fox huntsman's red broadcloth tail-coat, 
with all the glory of gilt buttons, a rather dilapidated 
red golf blazer, and a white, cavalryman's Eton coat, 
with silver buttons, and the coat-of-arms on. Words fail 
me to paint the elation of the winner of the fox hunting 
coat; while the wearer of the cavalry mess jacket was 
not the least bit daunted by the fact that when he got 
it on he could hardly breathe. I must say that he wore 
it over a deerskin kossak, which is not the custom of 
cavalrymen, I am led to believe. 

The coast-line from Ramah to Cape Chidley is just 
under one hundred miles, and on it live a few scattered 
Eskimo hunters. Mr. Ford knew every one of them 
personally, having lived there twenty-seven years. It 
appears that a larger race of Eskimos called "Tunits," 
to whom the present race were slaves, used to be on 
this section of the coast. At Nakvak there are re- 
mains of them. In Hebron, the same year that we 
met the Indians at Davis Inlet, ^ we saw Pomiuk's 
mother. Her name is Regina, and she is now married 
to Valentine, the king of the Eskimos there. I have 
an excellent photograph of a royal dinner party, a thing 
which I never possessed before. The king and queen 
and a solitary courtier are seated on the rocks, gnawing 
contentedly raw walrus bones — "ivik" they call it. 

The Eskimos one year suffered very heavily from an 
epidemic of influenza — the germ doubtless imported 
by some schooner from the South. Like all primitive 
peoples, they had no immunity to the disease, and the 
suffering and mortality were very high. It was a pa- 
thetic sight as the lighter received its load of rude coffins 
from the wharf, with all the kindly little people gathered 
to tow them to their last resting-place in the shallow 
sand at the end of the inlet. The ten coffins in one 



156 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

grave seemed more the sequence of a battle than of a 
summer sickness in Labrador. Certainly the hospital 
move on the part of the Moravians deserved every com- 
mendation; though I understand that at their little 
hospital in Okkak they have not always been able to 
have a qualified medical man in residence. 

One old man, a patient on whose hip I had operated, 
came and insisted that I should examine the scars. 
Oddly enough during the operation the Eskimo, who 
was the only available person whom I had been able 
to find to hold the hght, had fainted, and left me in 
darkness. I had previously had no idea that their 
sensibiHties were so akin to ours. 

At Napatuliarasok Island are some lovely specimens 
of blue and green and golden Labradorite, a striated 
feldspar with a glorious sheen. Nothing has ever really 
been done with this from a commercial point of view; 
moreover, the samples of gold-bearing quartz, of which 
such good hopes have been entertained, have so far been 
found wanting also. Li my opinion this is merely due 
to lack of persevering investigation — for one cannot 
believe that this vast area of land can be utterly un- 
remunerative. 

On one of the old maps of Labrador this terse de- 
scription is written by the cartographer: "Labrador 
was discovered by the English. There is nothing in 
it of any value"; and another historian enlarges on 
the theme in this fashion : " God made the world in five 
days, made Labrador on the sixth, and spent the sev- 
enth throwing stones at it." It is so near and yet so 
far, so large a section of the British Empire and yet 
so little known, and so romantic for its wild grandeur, 
and many fastnesses still untrodden by the foot of 
man! The polar current steals from the unknown 



THE PEOPLE OF LABRADOR 157 

North its ice treasures, and lends them with no nig- 
gard hand to this seaboard. There is a never-wearying 
charm in these countless icebergs, so stately in size 
and so fantastic in shape and colouring. 

The fauna and flora of the country are so varied 
and exquisite that one wonders why the world of science 
has so largely passed us by. Perhaps with the advent 
of hydroplanes, Labrador will come to its own among 
the countries of the world. Not only the ethnologist 
and botanist, but the archaeologist as well reaps a rich 
harvest for his labours here. Many relics of a recent 
stone age still exist. I have had brought to me stone 
saucepans, lamps, knives, arrow-heads, etc., taken from 
old graves. It is the Eskimo custom to entomb with 
the dead man all and every possession which he 
might want hereafter, the idea being that the spirit of 
the implement accompanies the man's spirit. Relics 
of ancient whaling establishments, possibly early Basque, 
are found in plenty at one village, while even to-day 
the trapper there needing a runner for his komatik can 
always hook up a whale's jaw or rib from the mud of 
the harbour. Relief of rovers of the sea, who sought 
shelter on this uncharted coast with its million is- 
lands, are still to be found. A friend of mine was one 
day looking from his boat into the deep, narrow chan- 
nel in front of his house, when he perceived some strange 
object in the mud. With help he raised it, and found 
a long brass "Long Tom" cannon, which now stands 
on the rocks at that place. Remains of the ancient 
French occupation should also be procurable near the 
seat of their deserted capital near Bradore. 

My friend, Professor Reginald Daly, head of the Depart- 
ment of Geology at Harvard University, after having 
spent a summer with me on the coast, wrote as follows: 



158 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

"We crossed the Straits of Belle Isle once more, 
homeward bound. Old Jacques Cartier, searching for 
an Eldorado, found Labrador, and in disgust called it 
the *Land of Cain.' A century and a half afterward Lieu- 
tenant Roger Curtis wrote of it as a ' country formed of 
frightful mountains, and unfruitful valleys, a prodigious 
heap of barren rock'; and George Cartwright, in his 
gossipy journal, summed up his impressions after five 
and twenty years on the coast. He said, 'God created 
this country last of all, and threw together there the 
refuse of his materials as of no use to mankind.' 

"We have learned at last the vital fact that Nature 
has set apart her own picture galleries where men may 
resort if for a time they would forget human contri- 
vances. Such a wilderness is Labrador, a kind of men- 
tal and moral sanitarium. The beautiful is but the 
visible splendor of the true. The enjoyment of a visit 
to the coast may consist not alone in the impressions 
of the scenery; there may be added the deeper pleasure 
of reading out the history of noble landscapes, the 
sculptured monuments of elemental strife and revolu- 
tions of distant ages." 



CHAPTER VIII 

LECTURING AND CRUISING 

We had now been coming for some two years to the 
coast, and the problem was assummg larger proportions 
than I felt the Society at home ought to be called on 
to finance. It seemed advisable, therefore, to try and 
raise money in southern Newfoundland and Canada. 
So under the wing of the most famous seal and fish 
killer. Captain Samuel Blandf ord, I next visited and lec- 
tured in St. John's, Harbour Grace, and Carbonear. 

The towns in Newfoundland are not large. Its sec- 
tarian schools and the strong denominational feeling 
between the churches so greatly divide the people that 
united efforts for the Kingdom of God were extremely 
rare before the war. Even now there is no Y.M.C.A. 
or Y.W.C.A. in the Colony. The Boys' Brigade, which 
we initiated our first year, divided as it grew in impor- 
tance, into the Church Lads Brigade, the Catholic 
Cadet Corps, and the Methodist Guards. 

Dr. Bobardt, my yoimg Australian colleague, and I 
now decided to cross over to Halifax. We had only 
a certain amount of money for the venture; it was our 
first visit to Canada, and we knew no one. We carried 
credentials, however, from the Marquis of Ripon and 
other reputable persons. If we had had experience as 
commercial travellers, this would have been child's play. 
But our education had been in an English school and uni- 
versity; and when finally we sat at breakfast at the 
Halifax hotel we felt like fish out of water. Such suc- 
cess as we obtained subsequently I attribute entirely 
to what then seemed to me my colleague's colonial 



160 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

"cheek." He insisted that we should call on the most 
prominent persons at once, the Prime Minister, the 
General in charge of the garrison, the Presidents of the 
Board of Trade and University, the Governor of the 
Province, and all the leading clergymen. There have 
been times when I have hesitated about getting my an- 
chors for sea, when the barometer was falling, the wind 
in, and a fog-bank on the horizon — but now, years 
after, I still recall my reluctance to face that ordeal. 
But like most things, the obstacles were largely in one's 
own mind, and the kindness which we received left me 
entirely overwhelmed. Friends formed a regular com- 
mittee to keep a couple of cots going in our hospital, 
to collect supplies, and sent us to Montreal with in- 
troductions and endorsements. Some of these people 
have since been lifelong helpers of the Labrador Mis- 
sion. 

By the time we reached Montreal, our funds were 
getting low, but Dr. Bobardt insisted that we must 
engage the best accommodations, even if it prevented 
our travelling farther west. The result was that re- 
porters insisted on interviewing him as to the purpose 
of an AustraKan coming to Montreal; and I was startled 
to see a long account which he had jokingly given them 
published in the morning papers, stating that his pur- 
pose was to materialize the All Red Line and arrange 
closer relations between Australia and Canada. Ac- 
cording to his report my object was to inspect my 
ranch in Alberta. Life to him, whether on the Labrador 
Coast, in an English school, or in his Australian home, 
was one perpetual picnic. 

Naturally, our most important interview was with 
Lord Strathcona. He was President of the Hudson 
Bay Company, the Canadian Pacific Railroad, and the 



LECTURING AND CEUISmO 161 

Bank of Montreal. As a poor Scotch lad named Donald 
Smith he had lived for thirteen years of his early life 
in Labrador. There he had found a wife and there his 
daughter was born. From the very first he was thor- 
oughly interested in our work, and all through the years 
until his death in 1914 his support was maintained, so 
that at the very time he died we were actually due to 
visit him the following month at Knels worth. 

We hired the best hall and advertised Sir Donald as 
our chairman. To save expense Dr. Bobardt acted in 
the ticket-box. When Sir Donald came along, not 
having seen him previously, he insisted on collecting 
fifty cents from him as from the rest. When Sir Don- 
ald strongly protested that he was our chairman, the 
shrewd young doctor merely replied that several others 
before him had made the same remark. Every one in 
the city knew Sir Donald; and when the matter was 
explained to him in the greenroom, he was thoroughly 
pleased with the business-like attitude of the Mission. 
As we had never seen Canada he insisted that we must 
take a holiday and visit as far west as British Columbia. 
All of this he not only arranged freely for us, but even 
saw to such details as that we should ride on the engine 
through the Rocky Mountains, and be entertained at 
his home called "Silver Heights" while in Winnipeg. 
It was during this trip that I visited "Grenfell Town," 
a queer little place called after Pascoe Grenfell, of the 
Bank of England, The marvel of the place to me was 
the thousands and thousands of acres of splendid farm- 
land on which no one lived. I promised that I would 
send the hotel-keeper the Grenfell crest. 

Lord Strathcona later presented the Mission with a fine 
little steamer, the Sir Donald, purchased and equipped 
at his expense through the Committee in Montreal. 



162 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

We went back to England very well satisfied with 
our work. Dr. Bobardt left me and entered the Navy, 
while I returned the following year and steamed the 
new boat from Montreal down the St. Lawrence River 
and the Straits to Battle Harbour. There the Albert, 
which had sailed again from England with doctors, 
nurses, and supplies, was to meet me. We had made 
a fine voyage, visiting all along the coast as we journeyed, 
and had turned in from sea through the last "run," or 
passage between islands. We had polished our brass- 
work, cleaned up our decks, hoisted our flags, all that 
we might make a triumphant entry on our arrival a 
few minutes later — when sudddenly. Buff — Bur^ — 
Buff, we rose, staggered, and fell over on a horrible 
submerged shoal. Our side was gored, our propeller 
and shaft gone, our keel badly sphntered, and the ship 
left high and dry. When we realized our mistake and 
the dreadful position into which we had put ourselves, 
we rowed ashore to the nearest island, walked three or 
four miles over hill and bog, and from there got a fish- 
erman with a boat to put us over to Battle Harbour 
Island. The good ship Albert lay at anchor in the 
harbour. Our new colleagues and old friends were all 
impatiently waiting to see our fine new steamer speed 
in with all her flags up — when, instead, two bedrag- 
gled-looking tramps, crestfallen almost to weeping, 
literally crept aboard. 

Sympathy took the form of deeds and a crowd at 
once went round in boats with a museum of implements. 
Soon they had her off, and our plucky schooner took her 
in tow all the three hundred miles to the nearest dry- 
dock at St. John's. 

Meanwhile Sir Thomas Roddick, of Montreal, an 
old Newfoundlander, had presented us with a spleijdid 



LECTURING AND CRUISING 163 

twenty-foot jolly-boat, rigged with lug-sail and centre- 
boom. In this I cruised north to Eskimo Bay, har- 
bouring at nights if possible, getting a local pilot when 
I could, and once being taken bodily on board, craft 
and all, by a big friendly fishing schooner. It proved 
a most profitable summer. I was so dependent on the 
settlers and fishermen for food and hospitality that I 
learned to know them as would otherwise have been im- 
possible. Far the best road to a seaman's heart is to 
let him do something for you. Our impressions of a 
landscape, like our estimates of character, all depend 
on our viewpoint. Fresh from the more momentous 
problems of great cities, the interests and misunder- 
standings of small isolated places bias the mind and 
make one censorious and resentful. But from the po- 
sition of a tight corner, that of needing help and hospi- 
tality from entire strangers, one learns how large are 
the hearts and homes of those who five next to Nature. 
If I knew the Labrador people before (and among such 
I include the Hudson Bay traders and the Newfound- 
land fishermen), that summer made me love them. I 
could not help feeling how much more they gladly and 
freely did for me than I should have dreamed of doing 
for them had they come along to my house in London. 
I have sailed the seas in ocean greyhounds and in float- 
ing palaces and in steam yachts, but better than any 
other I love to dwell on the memories of that summer, 
cruising the Labrador in a twenty-footer. 

That year I was late returning South. Progress is 
slow in the fall of the year along the Labrador in a boat 
of that capacity. I was weather-bound, with the snow 
already on the ground in Square Island Harbour. The 
fishery of the settlers had been very poor. The traders 
coming South had passed them by. There were eight 



164 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

montlis of winter ahead, and practically no supplies 
for the dozen families of the little village. I shall never 
forget the confidence of the patriarch of the settlement. 
Uncle Jim, whose guest I was. The fact that we were 
without butter, and that "sweetness)" (molasses) was 
low, was scarcely even noticed. I remember as if it 
were yesterday the stimulating tang of the frosty air 
and the racy problem of the open sea yet to be covered. 
The bag of birds which we had captured when we had 
driven in for shelter from the storm made our dry-diet 
supper sweeter than any Delmonico ten-course dinner, 
because we had wrested it ourselves from the reluc- 
tant environment. Then last of all came the general 
meeting in Uncle Jim's house at night to ask the Lord 
to open the windows of heaven for the benefit of the 
pathetic little group on the island. Next morning the 
first thing on which our eyes lighted was the belated 
trader, actually driven north again by the storm, an- 
chored right in the harbour. Of course Uncle Jim 
knew that it would be there. Personally, I did not 
expect her, so can claim no credit for the telepathy; 
but if faith ever did work wonders it was on that oc- 
casion. There were laughing faces and happy hearts as 
we said good-bye, when my dainty little lady spread her 
wings to a fair breeze a day or so later. 

The gallant little Sir Donald did herself every credit 
the following year, and we not only visited the coast 
as far north as Cape Chidley, but explored the narrow 
channel which runs through the land into Ungava Bay, 
and places Cape Chidley itself on a detached island. 

There were a great many fishing schooners far north 
that season, and the keen pleasures of exploring a truly 
marvellous coast, practically uncharted and unknown, 
were redeemed from the reproach of selfishness by the 




THE LABRADOR DOCTOR LN SUMMER 



LECTURING AND CRUISING 165 

numerous opportunities for service to one's fellow 
men. 

>,£ Once that summer we were eleven days stuck in 
tlie ice, and wliile there the huge mail steamer broke 
her propeller, and a boat was sent up to us through 
the ice to ask for our help. The truck on my mast- 
heads was just up to her deck. The ice was a lot of 
trouble, but we got her into safety. On board were the 
superintendent of the Moravian Missions and his wife. 
They were awfully grateful. The great tub rolled 
about so in the Atlantic swell that the big ice-pans 
nearly came on deck. My dainty little lady took no 
notice of anything and picked her way among the pans 
like Agag "treading delicately." We had five hours' 
good push, however, to get into Battle Harbour. It 
was calm in the ice-field, only the heavy tide made it 
rim and the little "alive" steamer with human skill beat 
the massive mountains of ice into a cocked hat. 

At Indian Tickle there is a nice little church which 
was built by subscription and free labour the second 
year we came on the coast. There is one especially 
charming feature about this building. It stands in 
such a position that you can see it as you come from the 
north miles away from the harbour entrance, and it 
is so situated that it leads directly into the safe anchorage. 
There are no lights to guide sailors on this coast at all, 
and yet during September, October, and November, 
three of the most dangerous months in the year, hun- 
dreds of schooners and thousands of men, women, and 
children are coming into or passing through this har- 
bour on their way to the southward. By a nice ar- 
rangement the little east window points to the north 
— if that is not Irish — and two large bracket lamps 
can be turned on a pivot, so that the lamps and their 



166 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

reflectors throw a light out to sea. The good planter, 
at his own expense, often maintains a light here on stormy 
or dark nights, and "steering straight for it" brings one 
to safety. 

While cruising near Cape Chidley, a schooner sig- 
nalling with flag at half-mast attracted our attention. 
On going aboard we found a young, man with the globe 
of one eye ruptured by a gun accident, in great pain, 
and in danger of losing the other eye sympathetically. 
Having excised the globe, we allowed him to go back 
to his vessel, intensely grateful, but full of apprehension 
as to how his girl would regard him on his return South. 
It so happened that we had had a gift of false eyes, and 
we therefore told him to call in at hospital on his way 
home and take his chance on getting a blue one. While 
walking over the hill near the hospital that fall I ran 
into a crowd of young fishermen, whose schooner was 
wind-bound in the harbour, and who had been .into the 
country for an hour's trouting. One asked me to look 
at his eye, as something was wrong with it. Being in a 
hurry, I simply remarked, "Come to hospital, and I'll 
examine it for you"; whereupon he burst out into a 
merry laugh, "Why, Doctor, I'm the boy whose eye 
you removed. This is the glass one you promised. 
Do you think it will suit her? " 

Another time I was called to a large schooner in the 
same region. There were two young girls on board 
doing the cooking and cleaning, as was the wont in 
Newfoundland vessels. One, alas, was seriously ill, 
having given birth to a premature child, and hav- 
ing lain absolutely helpless, with only a crew of kind 
but strange men anywhere near. RoUing her up in 
blankets, we transferred her to the Sir Donald, and 
steamed for the nearest Moravian station. Here the 



LECTURING AND CRUISING 167 

necessary treatment was possible, and when we left 
for the South a Moravian's good wife accompanied us 
as nurse. The girl, however, had no wish to live. "I 
want to die, Doctor; I can never go home again." Her 
physical troubles had abated, but her mind was made 
up to die, and this, in spite of all our care, she did a few 
days later. The pathos of the scene as we rowed the 
poor child's body ashore for interment on a rocky and 
lonely headland, looking out over the great Atlantic, 
wrapped simply in the flag of her country, will never be 
forgotten by any of us — the silent but unanswerable 
reproach on man's utter selfishness. Many such scenes 
must rise to the memory of the general practitioner; at 
times, thank God, affording those opportunities of doing 
more for the patients than simply patching up their 
bodies — opp>ortumties which are the real reward for the 
"art of healing." Some years later I revisited the grave 
of this poor girl, marked by the simple wooden cross 
which we had then put up, and bearing the simple in- 
scription: 

Suzanne 
" Jesus said, Neither do I condemn thee." 

The fall trip lasted till late into November, without 
our even realizing the fact that snow was on the ground. 
Indeed the ponds were all frozen and we enjoyed drives 
with dog teams on the land before we had finished 
our work and could think of leaving. We had scarcely 
left Flowers Cove and were just burying our little 
steamer — loaded to the utmost with wood, cut in re- 
turn for winter clothing — in the dense fog which al- 
most universally maintains in the Straits, and were 
rounding the hidden ledges of rock which lie half a 
mile offshore, when we discovered a huge trans-Atlantic 



168 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

liner racing up in our wake. We instantly put down 
our helm and scuttled out of the way to avoid the wash, 
and almost held our breath as the great steamer dashed 
by at twenty miles an hour, between us and the hidden 
shoal. She altered her helm as she did so, no doufet 
catching her first sight of the lighthouse as she emerged 
from the fog-bank, but as it was, she must have passed 
within an ace of the shoal. We expected every minute 
to see her dash on the top of it, and then she passed out 
of sight once more, her light-hearted passengers no 
doubt completely unconscious that they had been in 
any danger at all. 

The last port of call was Henley, or Chateau, where 
formerly the British had placed a fort to defend it against 
the French. We had carried round with us a prospec- 
tive bridegroom, and we were privileged to witness the 
wedding, a simple but very picturesque proceeding. 
A parson had been fetched from thirty miles away, and 
every kind of hospitality provided for the festive event. 
But in spite of the warmth of the occasion the weather 
turned bitterly cold, the harbour "caught over," and 
for a week we were prisoners. When at last the young 
ice broke up again, we made an attempt to cross the 
Straits, but sea and wind caught us halfway and forced 
us to run back, this time in the thick fog. The Straits' 
current had carried us a few miles in the meanwhile — 
which way we did not know — and the land, hard to 
make out as it was in the fog, was white with snow. 
However, with the storm increasing and the long dark 
night ahead, we took a sporting chance, and ran direct 
in on the cliffs. How we escaped shipwreck I do not 
know now. We suddenly saw a rock on our bow and 
a sheer precipice ahead, twisted round on our heel, 
shot between the two, and we knew where we were. 



LECTURING AND CRUISING 169 

as that is the only rock on a coast-line of twenty miles 
of beach — but there really is no room between it and 
the chff. 

All along the coast that year we noticed a change 
of attitude toward professional medical aid. Confidence 
in the wise woman, in the seventh son and his "wonder- 
ful" power, in the use of charms like green worsted, 
haddock fins, or scrolls of prayer tied round the neck, 
had begun to waver. The world talks still of a blind 
man made to see nineteen hundred years ago; but the 
coast had recently been more thrilled by the tale of a 
blind man made to see by "these yere doctors." One 
was a man who for seventeen years had given up all 
hope; and two others, old men, parted for years, and 
whose first occasion of seeing again had revealed to 
them the fact that they were brothers. 

Some lame had also been made to walk — persons who 
had abandoned hope quite as much as he who lay for 
forty years by the Pool of Siloam, or for a similar period 
at the Golden Gate. 

One of my first operations had been rendered abso- 
lutely inescapable by the great pain caused by a tumour 
in the leg. The patient had insisted on having five men 
sit on her while the operation proceeded, as she did not 
believe it was right to be put to sleep, and, moreover, 
she secretly feared that she might not wake up again. 
But now the conversion of the coast had proceeded so 
far that many were pleading for a winter doctor. At 
first we did not think it feasible, but my colleague. 
Dr. Willway, finally volunteered to stay at Battle 
Harbour. We loaded him up with all our spare assets 
against the experiment, the hospital being but very 
Hi-equipped for an Arctic winter. When the following 
summer we approached the coast, it was with real 



170 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

trepidation that I scanned the land for signs of my 
derelict friend. We felt that he would be gravely al- 
tered at least, possibly having grown hair all over his 
face. When an alert, tanned, athletic figure, neatly ton- 
sured and barbered, at last leaped over our rail, all 
our sympathy vanished and gave way to jealousy. 

One detail, however, had gone wrong. We had an- 
chored our beautiful Sir Donald in his care in a har- 
bour off the long bay on the shores of which he was winter- 
ing. He had seen her once or twice in her ice prison, 
but when he came to look for her in the spring, she 
had mysteriously disappeared. The ice was there still. 
There was n 't a vestige of wreckage. She must have 
sunk, and the hole frozen up. Yet an extended period 
of "creeping" the bottom with drags and grapples 
had revealed nothing, and, anyhow, the water not being 
deep, her masts should have been easily visible. It 
was not till some time later that we heard from the 
South that our trusty craft had been picked up some 
three hundred miles to the southward and westward, 
well out in a heavy ice-pack, and right in amongst a 
big patch of seals, away off on the Atlantic. The whole 
of the bay ice had evidently gone out together, taking 
the ship with it, and the bay had then neatly frozen 
over again. The seal hunters laughingly assured me 
that they found a patch of old "swiles" having tea in 
the cabin. As the hull of the Sir Donald was old, and 
the size of the boat made good medical work aboard im- 
possible, we decided to sell her and try and raise the 
funds for a more seaworthy and capable craft. 

Years of experience have subsequently emphasized 
the fact that if you are reasonably resistant, and want 
to get tough and young again, you can do far worse 
than come and winter on "the lonely Labrador." , 



CHAPTER IX 

THE SEAL FISHERY 

Returning South in the fall of 1895, business ne- 
cessitated my remaining for some time in St. John's, 
where as previously the Governor, Sir Terence O'Brien, 
very kindly entertained me. It proved to be a most 
exciting time. There were only two banks in the Col- 
ony, called respectively the Union and the Commercial. 
These issued all the notes used in the country and ex- 
cept for the savings bank had all the deposits of the 
fishermen and people. Suddenly one day I was told, 
though with extreme secrecy, that the two banks were 
unsound and would not again open after Monday 
morning. This was early on Saturday. Business went 
on as usual, but among the leaders of the country con- 
sternation was beginning to spread. The banks closed 
at their usual hour — three o'clock on Saturday, and 
so far as I knew no one profited by the secret knowl- 
edge, though later accusations were made against some 
people. The serious nature of the impending disaster 
never really dawned on me, not being either personally 
concerned in either bank or having any experience of 
finance. When the collection came around at the cathe- 
dral on Sunday my friend whispered to me, "That 
silver will be valuable to-morrow." It so happened that 
on Sunday I was dining with the Prime Minister, who 
had befriended all our efforts, and his tremendously 
serious view of the position of the Colony sent me to 
bed full of alarms for my new friends. We were to 
have sailed for England next day and I went down 
after breakfast to buy my ticket. The agent sold it. 



172 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

but remarked, "I am not sure if Newfoundland money 
is good any longer. It is a speculation selling you this 
ticket." Before we sailed the vessel was held up by the 
Government, as only a few of the ships were taking notes 
at face value. Those of the Commercial Bank were 
only fetching twenty cents. Besides the banks quite 
a number of commercial firms also closed. The direc- 
tors of the banks were all local merchants, and many 
were heavily indebted to them for supplies given out 
to their "planters," as they call the fishermen whom 
they supply with goods in advance to catch fish for 
them. It was a sorry mix-up, and business was very dif- 
ficult to carry on because we had no medium of ex- 
change. Even the Governor to pay his gardener had to 
give I.O.U. orders on shops — there simply being no 
currency available. 

Matters have long since adjusted themselves, though 
neither bank ever reopened. Larger banks of good 
standing came in from Canada, and no one can find 
anything of which to complain in the financial affairs 
of the "oldest Colony," even in these days of war. 

Newfoimdland has a large seal as well as cod fishery. 
The great sealing captains are all aristocrats of the 
fishermen and certainly are an unusually fine set of 
men. The work calls for peculiar training in the hardest 
of schools, for great self-reliance and resource, besides 
skill in handling men and ships. In those days the 
doyen of the fleet was Captain Samuel Blandford. He 
fired me with tales of the hardships to be encountered 
and the opportunities and needs for a doctor among three 
hundred men hundreds of miles from anywhere. The 
result was a decision to return early from my lecture 
tour and go out with the seal hunters of the good ship 
Neptune. 



THE SEAL FISHERY 173 

I look back on this as one of the great treats of my 
life; though I believe it to be an industry seriously de- 
trimental to the welfare of the people of the Colony 
and the outside world. For no mammal bringing forth 
but one young a year can stand, when their young are 
just born and are entirely helpless, being attacked by 
huge steel-protected steamers carrying hundreds of men 
with modern rifles or even clubs. Advantage is also 
taken of the maternal instinct to get the mothers as 
well as the young "fat," if the latter is not obtainable 
in suflicient quantities. Meanwhile the poor scattered 
people of the northern shores of Newfoundland are 
being absolutely ruined and driven out. They need the 
seals for clothing, boots, fresh food, and fats. They use 
every portion of the few animals which each catches, 
while the big steamers lose thousands which they have 
killed, by not carrying them at once to the ship and leav- 
ing them in piles to be picked up later. Moreover, in the 
latter case all the good proteid food of their carcasses is 
left to the sharks and gulls. 

At twelve o'clock of March 10, 1896, the good ship 
Neptune hauled out into the stream at St. John's Har- 
bour, Newfoundland, preparatory to weighing anchor for 
the seal fishery. The law allows no vessels to sail before 
2 P.M. on that day, ujider a penalty of four thousand dol- 
lars fine — nor may any seals be killed from the steamers 
until March 14, and at no time on Sundays. The whole 
city of St. John's seemed to be engrossed in the one ab- 
sorbing topic of the seal fishery. It meant if successful 
some fifty thousand pounds sterling at least to the Colony 
— it meant bread for thousands of people — it meant 
for days and even weeks past that men from far-away 
outports had been slowly collecting at the capital, till 
the main street was peopled all day with anxious-looking 



174 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

crowds, and all the wharves where there was any chance 
of a "berth" to the ice were fairly in a state of siege. 

Now let us go down to the dock and visit the ship be- 
fore she starts. She is a large barque-rigged vessel, with 
auxiliary steam, or rather one should say a steamer with 
auxiliary sails. The first point that strikes one is her 
massive build, her veritable bulldog look as she sits on 
the water. Her sides are some eighteen inches thick, and 
sheathed and resheathed with "greenheart" to help her 
in battering the ice. Inside she is ceiled with English oak 
and beech, so that her portholes look like the arrow slits 
of the windows of an old feudal castle. Her bow is double- 
stemmed — shot with a broad band of iron, and the 
space of some seventeen feet between the two stems 
solid with the choicest hardwoods. Below decks every 
corner is adapted to some use. There are bags of flour, 
hard bread, and food for the crew of three hundred and 
twenty men; five hundred tons of coal for the hungry 
engine in her battle with the ice-floe. The vessel carries 
only about eighteen hundred gallons of water and the 
men use five hundred in a day. This, however, is of little 
consequence, for a party each day brings back plenty of 
ice, which is excellent drinking after being boiled. This 
ice is of very different qualities. Now it is "slob" mixed 
with snow born on the Newfoundland coast. This is 
called "dirty ice" by the sealers. Even it at times packs 
very thick and is hard to get through. Then there is the 
clearer, heavy Arctic ice with here and there huge ice- 
bergs frozen in; and again the smoother, whiter variety 
known as "whelping ice" — that is, the Arctic shore ice, 
born probably in Labrador, on which the seals give birth 
to their pups. 

The masters of watches are also called " scunners" — 
they go up night and day in the forebarrel to "scim" the 



THE SEAL FISHERY 175 

ship — that is, to find the way or leads through the ice. 
This word comes from "con" of the conning tower on a 
man-of-war. 

When the morning of the 10th arrives, all is excitement. 
Fortmiately this year a southwest wind had blown the 
ice a mile or so offshore. Now all the men are on board. 
The vessels are in the stream. The flags are up; the 
whistles are blowing. The hour of two approaches at last, 
and a loud cheering, renewed again and again, intimates 
that the first vessel is off, and the S.S. Aurora comes up 
the harbour. Cheers from the ships, the wharves, and the 
town answer her whistle, and closely followed by the 
S.S. Neptune and S.S. Windsor, she gallantly goes out, 
the leader of the sealing fleet for the year. 

There have been two or three great disasters at the 
seal fishery, where niunbers of men astray from their 
vessels in heavy snow blizzards on the ice have perished 
miserably. Sixteen fishermen were once out hunting for 
seals on the frozen ice of Trinity Bay when the wind 
changed and drove the ice offshore. When night came on 
they realized their terrible position and that, with a gale 
of wind blowing, they could not hope to reach land in 
their small boats. Nothing but an awful death stared 
them in the face, for in order to hunt over the ice men 
must be lightly clad, so as to run and jump from piece 
to piece. Without fire, without food, without sufficient 
clothing, exposed to the pitiless storm on the frozen sea, 
they endured thirty-six hours without losing a life. Fin- 
ally, they dragged their boats ten miles over the ice to 
the land, where they arrived at last more dead than alive. 

It is the physical excitement of travelling over broken 
loose ice on the bosom of the mighty ocean, and the skill 
and athletic qualities which the work demands, that 
m^es one love the voyage. Jumping from the side of the 



176 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

ship as she goes along, skurrying and leaping from ice-pan 
to ice-pan, and then having killed, "sculped," and 
"pelted" the seal, the exciting return to the vessel! But 
it has its tragic side, for it takes its regular tribute of 
fine human life. 

A Mr. Thomas Green, of Greenspond, while a boy, 
with his father and another man and a 'prentice lad, was 
tending his seal nets when a "dwey" or snowstorm came 
on, and the boat became unmanageable and drifted off 
to sea. They struck a small island, but drifted off again. 
That night the father and the 'prentice lad died, and 
next morning the other man also. The son dressed him- 
self in all the clothes of the other three, whose bodies he 
kept in the boat. He ate the flesh of an old harp seal they 
had caught in their net. On the third day by wonderful 
luck he gaffed an old seal in the slob ice. This he hauled 
in and drank the warm blood. On the fifth day he killed 
a white-coat, and thinking that he saw a ship he walked 
five miles over the floe, leaving his boat behind. The 
phantom ship proved to be an island of ice, and in the 
night he had to tramp back to his open punt. On the 
seventh day he was really beginning to give up hope 
when a vessel, the Flora, suddenly hove in sight. He 
shouted loudly as it was dark, whereupon she imme- 
diately tacked as if to leave him. Again he shouted, "For 
God's sake, don't leave me with my dead father here!" 
The words were plainly heard on board, and the vessel 
hove to. The watch had thought that his previous shout- 
ing was of supernatural origin. He and his boat with its 
pitiful load were picked up and sent back home by a 
passing vessel. 

On this particular voyage we were lucky enough to 
come early into the seals. From the Conner's barrel, in 
which I spent a great deal of time, we saw one morijpig 



THE SEAL FISHERY 177 

black dots spread away in thousands all over the ice- 
floes through which we were butting, ramming, and 
fighting our way. All hands were over the side at once, 
and very soon patients began needing a doctor. Here 
a cut, there a wrench or sprain, and later came thirty 
or forty at a time with snow-bhndness or conjunctivitis 

— very painful and disabling, though not fatal to sight. 
One morning we had been kept late relieving these 

various slight ailments, and the men being mostly out 
on .the ice made me think that they were among the 
seals; so I started out alone as soon as I could slip over 
the side to join them. This, however, I failed to do till 
late in the afternoon, when the strong wind, which had 
kept the loose ice packed together, dropped, and in less 
than no time it was all "running abroad." The result 
naturally is that one cannot get along except by floating 
on one piece to another, and that is a slow process with- 
out oars. It came on dark and a dozen of us who had got 
together decided to make for a large pan not far distant; 
but were obliged to give it up, and wait for the ship 
which had long gone out of sight. To keep warm we 
played "leap-frog," "caps," and "hop, skip, and jump" 

— at which some were very proficient. We ate our sugar 
and oatmeal, mixed with some nice clear snow; and then, 
shaving our wooden seal bat handles, and dipping them 
into the fat of the animals which we had killed, we made 
a big blaze periodically to attract the attention of the 
ship. 

It was well into the night before we were picked up; 
and no sooner had we climbed over the rail than the 
skipper came and gave us the best or worst "blowing- 
up" I ever received since my father spanked me. He 
told me afterwards that his good heart was really so 
relieved by om- safe return that he was scarcely conscious 



178 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

of what he said. Indeed, any words which might have 
been considered as unparHamentary he asked me to 
construe as gratitude to God. 

Our captain was a passenger on and prospective cap- 
tain of the S.S. Tigris when she picked up those members 
of the ill-fated Polaris expedition who had been five 
months on the ice-pans. He had gone below from his 
watch and daylight was just breaking when the next 
watch came and reported a boat and some people on a 
large pan, with the American flag flying. A kayak came 
off and Hans, an Eskimo, came alongside and said, "Ship 
lost. Captain gone." Boats were immediately lowered 
and nineteen persons, including two women and one 
baby, born on the ice-pan, came aboard amidst cheers 
renewed again and again. They had to be washed and 
fed, cleaned and clothed. The two officers were invited 
to live aft and the remainder of the rescued party being 
pestered to death by the sealing crew in the forecastle, 
it was decided to abandon the sealing trip, and the brave 
explorers were carried to St. John's, the American people 
eventually indemnifying the owners of the Tigris. 

In hunting my patients I started round with a book 
and pencil accompanied by the steward carrying a candle 
and matches. The invalids were distributed in the four 
holds — the after, the main, forecastle, and f oretop- 
gallant-forecastle. I never went round without a bottle 
of cocaine solution in my pocket for the snow-blind men, 
who suffered the most excruciating pain, often rolling 
about and moaning as if in a kind of frenzy, and to whom 
the cocaine gave wonderful relief. Very often I found 
that I must miss one or even both holds on my first 
rounds, for the ladders were gone and seals and coals 
were exchanging places in them during the first part of 
the day. Once down, however, one shouts out, "Is there 



THE SEAL FISHERY , 179 

any one here?" No answer. Louder still, "Is there any 
one here?" Perhaps a distant cough answers from some 
dark recess, and the steward and I begin a search. Then 
we go round systematically, climbing over on the barrels, 
searching under sacks, and poking into recesses, and 
after all occasionally missing one or two in our search. It 
seems a pecuHarity about the men, that though they 
will lie up, they will not always say anything about it. 
The holds were very damp and dirty, but the men 
seemed to improve in health and fattened like the young 
seals. It must have been the pork, doughs, and excellent 
fresh meat of the seal. We had boiled or fried seal quite 
often with onions, and I must say that it was excellent 
eating — far more palatable than the dried codfish, 
which, when one has any ice work, creates an intolerable 
thirst. 

The rats were making a huge noise one night and a 
barrel man gave it as his opinion that we should have a 
gale before long; but a glorious sunshine came streaming 
down upon us next morning, and we decided perforce 
the rats were evidently a little previous. 

On Sunday I had a good chance to watch the seals. 
They came up, simply stared at the ship; now from 
sheer fat rolling on their backs, and lying for a few 
seconds tail and flippers beating the air helpless. These 
baby seals resemble on the ice nothing so much as the 
South Sea parrot fish — that is, a complete round head, 
with somewhere in the sphere two huge black dots for 
eyes and a similar one for a nose. These three form the 
comers of a small triangle, and except for the tail one 
could not easily tell which was the back and which the 
belly of a young white-coat — especially in stormy 
weather. For it is a well-ascertained fact that Nature 
makes the marvellous provision that in storm and snow 



180 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

they grow fattest and fastest. I have marvelled greatly 
how it is possible for any hot-blooded creature to enjojr 
so immensely this terribly cold water as do these old 
seals. They paddle about, throw themselves on their 
backs, jBoat and puff out their breasts, flapping their 
flippers like paws over their chests. 

Sunday morning we were lying off Fogo Island when 
some men came aboard and reported the wreck of the 
S.S. Wolf in the ice. She got round the island, a wind off- 
shore having cleared the ice from the land. Three other 
vessels were behind her. Hardly, however, had she got 
roimd when the northerly wind brought the ice back. 
The doomed ship now lay between the main or fixed 
frozen shore ice and the immense floe which was im- 
pelled by the north wind acting on its whole irregular 
surface. The force was irresistible. The Wolf backed and 
butted and got twenty yards into a nook in the main ice, 
and lay there helpless as an infant. On then. swept the 
floe, crashed into the fixed ice, shattered its edge, rose 
up out of water over it, which is called "rafting," forced 
itself on the unfortunate ship, rose over her bulwarks, 
crushed in her sides, and only by nipping her tightly 
avoided sinking her immediately. Seeing that all was lost, 
Captain Kean got the men and boats onto the pans, 
took all they could save of food and clothes, but before 
he had saved his own clothing, the ice parted enough to 
let her through and she sank like a stone, her masts 
catching and breaking in pieces as she went. A sorrowful 
march for the shore now began over the ice, as the three 
hundred men started for home, carrying as much as they 
could on their backs. Many would have to face empty 
cupboards and hard times; all would have days of walk- 
ing and rowing and camping before they could get home. 
One hundred miles would be the least, two and even 



THE SEAL FISHERY 181 

three hundred for some, before they could reach their 
own villages. Some of these poor fellows had walked 
nearly two hundred miles to get a chance of going on the 
lost ship, impelled by hunger and necessity. Alas, we felt 
very sad for them and for Captain Kean, who had to 
face almost absolute ruin on account of this great loss. 

The heaving of the great pans, like battering-rams 
against the sides of the Neptune, made a woesome noise 
below decks. I was often glad of her thirty-six inches of 
hardwood covering. Every now and then she steamed 
ahead a little and pressed into the ice to prevent this. I 
tried to climb on one of the many icebergs, but the heavy 
swell made it dangerous. At every swell it rolled over 
and back some eight feet, and as I watched it I under- 
stood how an iceberg goes to wind. For it acted exactly 
like a steam plough, crashing down onto one large pan 
as it rolled, and then, as it rolled back, lifting up another 
and smashing it from beneath. A regular battle seemed 
to be going on, with weird sounds of blows and groanings 
of the large masses of ice. Sometimes as pieces fell off the 
water would rush up high on the side of the berg. For 
some reason or other the berg had red-and-white streaks, 
and looked much like an ornamental pudding. 

At latitude 50.18, about Funk Island, is one of the last 
refuges of the great auk. A few years ago, the earth, such 
as there is on these lonely rocks, was sifted for the bones 
of that extinct bird, and I think three perfect skeletons, 
worth a hundred pounds sterling each, were put together 
from the remnants discovered. One day the captain told 
me that he held on there in a furious gale for some time. 
Masses of ice, weighing thirty or forty tons, were hurled 
high up and lodged on the top of the island. Some men 
went out to "pan " seals on a large pan. Seven hundred 
of the animals had been placed on one of them, and the 



182 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

men had just left it, when a furious breaking sea took 
hold of the pan and threw it completely upside down. 

I am never likely to forget the last lovely Sunday. We 
had nearly "got our voyage "; at least no one was anxious 
now for the credit of the ship. The sunshine was blazing 
hot as it came from above and below at the same time, 
and the blue sky over the apparently boundless field of 
heaving "floe" on which we lay made a contrast which 
must be seen to be appreciated. I had brought along a 
number of pocket hymn-books and in the afternoon we 
lay out on the high fore-deck and sang and talked, un- 
worried by callers and the thousand interruptions of the 
land. Then we had evening prayers together, Catholic 
and Protestant ahke; and for my part I felt the near- 
ness of God's presence as really as I have felt it in the 
mysterious environment of the most magnificent ca- 
thedral. Eternal life seemed so close, as if it lay just over 
that horizon of ice, in the eternal blue beyond. . 



CHAPTER X 

THREE YEARS' WORK IN THE BRITISH ISLES 

In the spring of 1897 I was asked by the Council to sail 
to Iceland with a view to opening work there, in response 
to a petition sent in to the Board by the Hearn long- 
liners and trawlers, who were just beginning their vast 
fishery in those waters from Hull and Grimsby. 

Having chosen a smaller vessel, so as to leave the hos- 
pital ship free for work among the fleets, we set sail for 
Iceland in June. The fight with the liquor traffic which 
the Mission had been waging had now been successful in 
driving the sale of intoxicants from the North Sea by 
international agreement; but the proverbial whiskey 
still continued its filibustering work in the Scotch sea- 
ports. As our men at times had to frequent these ports 
we were anxious to make it easier for them to walk 
straight while they were ashore. 

We therefore called at Aberdeen on the way and 
anchored off the first dock. The beautiful Seaman's 
Home there was on the wrong side of the harbour for the 
vessels, and was not offering exactly what was needed. 
So we obtained leave to put a hull in the basin, with a 
first-aid equipment, refreshments, lounge and writing- 
rooms, and with simple services on Sunday. This boat 
commenced then and there, and was run for some years 
under Captain Skiff; till she made way for the present 
homely little Fishermen's Institute exactly across the 
road from the docks before you came to the saloons. 

I shall not soon forget our first view of the cliffs of the 
southern coast of Iceland. We had called at Thorshaven 



184 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

in the Faroe group to see what we could learn of the 
boats fishing near Roekall; but none were there at the 
time. As we had no chronometers on our own boat we 
were quite unable to tdl our longitude — a very much- 
needed bit of information, for we had had fog for some 
days, and anyhow none of us knew anything about the 
coast. 

We brought up under the shadow of the mighty cliffs 
and were debating our whereabouts, when we saw an 
English sailing trawler about our own size, with his nets 
out close in under the land. So we threw out our boat and 
boarded him for information. He proved to be a Grimsby 
skipper, and we received the usual warm reception which 
these Yorkshire people know so well how to give. But to 
my amazement he was unable to afford us the one thing 
which we really desired. "I've been coming this way, 
man and boy, for forty years," he assured me. "But I 
can't read the chart, and I knows no more of the lay of 
the land than you does yourself. I don't use no chart 
beyond what's in my head." 

With this we were naturally not content, so we sent 
back to the boat for our own sheet chart to try and get 
more satisfactory information. But when it lay on the 
table in this old shellback's cabin all he did was to put 
down on it a huge and homy thumb that was nearly 
large enough to cover the whole historic island, and 
"guess we were somewhere just about here." 

Our cruise carried us all round the island — the larger 
part of our time being spent off the Vestmann Islands 
and the mouth of Brede Bugt, the large bay in which 
Reikyavik lies. It was off these islands that Eric the Red 
threw his flaming sticks into the sea. The first brand 
which alighted on the land directed him where to locate 
his new headquarters. Reikyavik means "smoking vil- 



IN THE BRITISH ISLES 185 

lage," so called from the vapours of the hot streams 
which come out of the ground near by. 

There is no night on the coast in summer; and even 
though we were a Mission ship we found it a real diffi- 
culty to keep tab of Sundays. The jfirst afternoon that 
I went visiting aboard a large trawler, the extraordinary 
number of fish and the specimens of unfamiliar varieties 
kept me so interested that I lost all count of time, and 
when at last hunger prompted me to look at my watch I 
found that it was exactly 1.30 a.m. 

At that time so many plaice and flatfish were caught 
at every haul, and they were so much more valuable than 
cod and haddock, that it was customary not to burden 
the vessel on her long five days' journey to market with 
round fish at all. These were, however, hauled up so 
rapidly to the surface from great depths that they had 
no time to accommodate the tension in their swimming 
bladders to the diminished pressure, with the result that 
when thrown overboard they were all left swimming 
upside down. A pathetic wake of white-bellied fish would 
stretch away for half a mile behind the vessel, over which 
countless screaming gulls and other birds were fighting. 
A sympathy for their horribly unprotected helplessness 
always left an uneasy sinking feeling at the pit of my 
own stomach. The waste has, however, righted itself in 
the course of years by the simple process of an increasing 
scarcity of the species, making it pay to save all haddock, 
cod, hake, hng, and other fish good for food, formerly so 
ruthlessly cast away. 

One had many interesting experiences in this voyage, 
some of which have been of no small value subsequently. 
But the best lesson was the optimism and contentment 
of one's fellows, who had apparently so few of the things 
that only tyrannize the lives of those who live for them. 



186 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

They were a simple, kindly, helpful people, living in a 
country barren and frigid beyond all others, with no 
trees except in one extreme corner of the island. The 
cows were literally fed on salt codfish and the tails of 
whales, and the goats grazed on the roofs of the houses, 
where existed the only available grass. There were dry, 
hard, and almost larval deposits over the whole surface 
of the land which is not occupied by perpetual snow and 
ice. The hot springs which abound in some regions only 
suggest a forlorn effort on the part of Nature at the last 
moment to save the situation. The one asset of the coun- 
try is its fisheries, and of these the whale and seal fish- 
eries were practically handed over to Norwegians; while 
large French and English boats fell like wolves on the 
fish, which the poor natives had no adequate means of 
securing for themselves. 

rWe were fishing one day in Seyde Fjord on the east 
coast, when suddenly with much speed and excitement 
the great net was hauled, and we started with several 
other trawlers to dash pell-mell for the open sea. The 
alarm of masts and smoke together on the horizon had 
been given — the sign manual of the one poor Danish 
gunboat which was supposed to control the whole swarm 
of far smarter little pirates, which lived like mosquitoes 
by sucking their sustenance from others. The water was 
as a general rule too deep outside the three-mile limit 
for legitimate fishing. 

The mention of Iceland brings to every one's mind 
the name of Pierre Loti. We saw many of the "pecheurs 
d'islande" whom he so effectively portrays; and often 
felt sorry enough for them, fishing as they still were from 
old square-rigged wind-jammers. On some of these which 
had been months on the voyage, enough green weed had 
grown "to feed a cow" — as the mate put it. 



IN THE BRITISH ISLES 187 

On our return home we reported the need of a Mission 
vessel on the coast, but the difficulty of her being where 
she was wanted at the right time, over such an extended 
fishery ground, was very considerable. We decided that 
only a steam hospital trawler would be of any real value 
— unless a small cottage hospital could be started in 
Seyde Fjord, to which the sick and injured could be 
taken. 

It was now thought wise that I should take a holiday, 
and thus through the kindness of my former chief. Sir 
Frederick Treves, then surgeon to the King, whose life 
he had been the means of saving, I found myself for a 
time his guest on the Scilly Islands. There we could 
divert our minds from our different occupations, con- 
juring up visions of heroes like Sir Cloudesley Shovel, 
who lost his life here, and of the scenes of daring and of 
death that these beautiful isles out in the Atlantic have 
witnessed. Nor did we need Charles Kingsley to paint 
for us again the visit of Angus Lee and Salvation Yeo, 
for Sir Frederick, as his book, "The Cradle of the Deep," 
shows, is a past-master in buccaneer lore. Besides that 
we had with us his nephew, the famous novel writer, 
A. E. W. Mason. 

Treves, with his usual insatiable energy, had organ- 
ized a grand regatta to be held at St. Mary's, at which 
the Governor of the island, the Duke of Wellington, and 
a host of visiting big-wigs were to be present. One event 
advertised as a special attraction/was a life-saving ex- 
hibition to be given by local experts from the judges' 
stage opposite the grand stand on the pier. This, Mason 
and I, being little more than ornaments in the other 
events, decided to try and improve upon. Dressed as a 
somewhat antiquated lady, just at the psychological 
moment Mason fell off the pier head with a loud scream 



188 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

— when, disguised as an aged clergyman, wildly gestic- 
ulating, and cramming my large beaver hat hard down 
on my head, I dived in to rescue him. A real scene en- 
sued. We were dragged out with such energy that the 
lady lost her skirt, and on reaching the pier fled for the 
boat-house clad only in a bonnet and bodice over a 
bathing-suit. Although the local press wrote up the 
affair as genuine, the secret somehow leaked out, and we 
had to make our bow at the prize distribution the follow- 
ing evening. 

Only parts of the winter seasons could be devoted to 
raising money. The general Mission budget had to be 
taken care of as well as the special funds; besides which 
one had to superintend the North Sea work. Thus the 
summer of 1897 was spent in Iceland as above described, 
and some of the winter in tjbie North Sea. The spring, 
summer, and part of the fall of 1898 were occupied by 
the long Irish trip, which established work among the 
spring herring and mackerel men from Crookhaven. 

On leaving England for one of these North Sea trips I 
was delayed and missed the hospital ship, so that later 
I was obliged to transfer to her on the high seas from the 
httle cutter which had kindly carried me out to the 
fishing grounds. Friends had been good enough to give 
me several httle delicacies on my departure, and I had, 
moreover, some especially cherished personal possessions 
which I desired to have with me on the voyage. These 
choice treasures consisted of some eggs, a kayak, a 
kodak, a chronometer, and a leg of mutton ! After I was 
safely aboard the Mission hospital ship I found to my 
chagrin that in my anxiety to transfer the eggs, the 
kayak, the kodak, the chronometer, and especially the 
leg of mutton to the Albert, I had forgotten my personal 
clothing. I appreciated the fact that a soaking meant a 



IN THE BRITISH ISLES 189 

serious matter, as I had to stay in bed till my things, 
which were drenched during my passage in the small 
boat, were dry again. 

It was on this same voyage that a man, badly dam- 
aged, sent off for a doctor. It was a dirty dark morning, 
"thick o' rain," and a nasty sea was running, but we 
were really glad of a chance of doing anything to re- 
lieve the monotony. So we booted and oil-skinned, sou'- 
westered and life-jacketed, till we looked like Tweedle- 
dum and Tweedledee, and felt much as I expect a 
German student does when he is bandaged and padded 
till he can hardly move, preparatory to his first duel. 
The boat was launched and eagerly announcing the fact 
by banging loudly and persistently on the Albert's side. 
Our two lads, Topsy and Sam, were soon in the boat, 
adopting the usual North Sea recipe for transit: (1) Lie 
on the rail full length so as not to get your legs and 
hands jammed. (2) Wait till the boat bounces in some- 
where below you. (3) Let go! It is not such a painful 
process as one might imagine, especially when one is be- 
padded as we were. The stretcher was ndw handed in, 
and a bag of splints and bandages. "All gone!" shouted 
simultaneously the mate and crew, who had risked a 
shower bath on deck to see us off; and after a vicious 
little crack from the Albert's quarter as we dropped 
astern, we found ourselves rushing away before the 
rolling waters, experiencing about the same sensation 
one can imagine a young sea-gull feels when he begins 
to fly.^ 

While the skipper was at work in the tobacco locker 
one morning he heard a fisherman say that he had taken 
poison. 

"Where did you get it? " 

" I got it from the Albert." 



190 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

"Who gave it to you?" 

"Skipper " mentioning the skipper's name. 

At this the skipper came out trembUng, wondering 
what he had done wrong now. 

"Well, you see it was this way. Our skipper had a bad 
leg, so as I was going aboard for some corf mixture, he 
just arst me to get him a drop of something to rub in. 
Well, the skipper here gives me a bottle of red liniment 
for our skipper's leg, and a big bottle of corf mixture for 
me, but by mistake I drinks the liniment and gave the 
corf mixture to our skipper to rub in his leg. I only found 
out that there yesterday, so I knew I were poisoned, and 
I've been lying up ever since." 

"How long ago did you get the medicine V 

"About a fortnight." 

This man had got it into his head that he was poisoned, 
and nothing on earth would persuade him to the contrary, 
so he was put to bed in the hospital. For three meals he 
had nothing but water and a dose of castor oil. By the 
next time dinner came round the patient really began to 
think he was on the mend, and remarked that "he began 
to feel real hungry like." It was just marvellous how 
much better he was before tea. He went home to his old 
smack, cured, and greatly impressed with the capacity 
of the medical profession. 

The first piece of news that reached us in the spring 
was that the Sir Donald had been found frozen in the 
floe ice far out on the Atlantic. No one was on board 
her, and there was little of any kind in her, but even the 
hardy crew of Newfoundland sealers who found her, as 
they wandered over the floating ice-fields in search of 
seals, did not fail to appreciate the weird and romantic 
suggestions of a derelict Mission steamer, keeping her 
lonely watch on that awful, deathlike waste. She had 



IN THE BRITISH ISLES 191 

been left at Assizes Harbour, usually an absolutely safe 
haven of rest. But she was not destined to end her 
chequered career so peacefully, for the Arctic ice came 
surging in and froze fast to her devoted sides, then bore 
her bodily into the open sea, as if to give her a fitting 
burial. The seaHng ship Ranger passed her a friendly 
rope, and she at length felt the joyful life of the rolHng 
ocean beneath her once more, and soon lay safely en- 
sconced in the harbour at St. John's. Here she was sold 
by auction, and part of the proceeds divided as her 
ransom to her plucky salvors. 

The money which could be especially devoted to the 
new steamer for Labrador, over and above the general 
expenses, was not forthcoming until 1899, when the 
contract for building the ship was given to a firm at 
Dartmouth in Devon. The chief donor of the new boat 
was again Lord Strathcona, after whom she was subse- 
quently named. 

On June 27, 1899, the Strathcona was launched, and 
christened by Lady Curzon-Howe. When the word was 
given to let go, without the slightest hitch or roll the ship 
slid steadily down the ways into the water. The band 
played "Eternal Father," "God save the Queen," and 
"Life on the Ocean Wave." Lord Curzon-Howe was 
formerly commodore upon the station embracing the 
Newfoundland and Labrador coast. Lord Strathcona 
regretted his enforced absence and sent "Godspeed" to 
the new steamer. 

She arrived at Gorleston July 18, proving an excellent 
sea-boat, with light coal consumption. She is larger than 
the vessel in which Drake sailed round the world, or 
Dampier raided the Spanish Main, or than the Speedy, 
which Earl Dundonald made the terror of the French 
and Spanish. 



192 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

In the fall of^ 1899 the hull of the Strathcona was com- 
pletely finished, and I brought her round, an empty shell, 
to fit her up at our Yarmouth wharf; after which, in com- 
pany with a young Oxford friend, Alfred Beattie, we left 
for the Labrador, crossing to Tilt Cove, Newfoundland, 
direct from Swansea in an empty copper ore tanker, the 
Kilmorack. On this I was rated as purser at twenty-five 
cents for the trip. Most tramps can roll, but an empty 
tanker going west against prevailing winds in the "roar- 
ing forties" can certainly give points to the others. Her 
slippery iron decks and the involuntary sideways ex- 
cursions into the scuppers still spring into my mind when 
a certain Psalm comes round in the Church calendar, 
with its "that thy footsteps slip not." We were a little 
delayed by what is known as wind-jamming, and we 
used to kill time by playing tennis in the huge empty 
hold. This occupation, under the circumstances, supplied 
every kind of diversion. 

The mine at Tilt Cove is situated in a hole in the huge 
headland which juts out far into the Atlantic, in the 
northern end of Newfoundland. Communication in these 
days was very meagre. No vessel would be available for 
us to get North for a fortnight. It so happened, however, 
that the Company's doctor had long been waiting a 
chance to get married, but his contract never allowed 
him to leave the mine without a medical man while it 
was working. I therefore found myself welcomed with 
open arms, and incidentally practising in his place the 
very next day — he having skipped in a boat after his 
bride. The exchange had been ratified by the captain of 
the mine on the assurance that I would not leave before 
he returned. It was absolutely essential that I should 
not let the next north-bound steamer go by. The season 
was already far advanced; and yet when the day on 



IN THE BRITISH ISLES 193 

which she was due arrived, there was no sign of the doctor 
and his wife. It was a kind of Damon and Pythias ex- 
perience — only Pythias got back late by a few hours 
in spite of all his efforts, and Damon would have had to 
pay the piper if the captain of the mine had not per- 
mitted me to proceed. 

The narrow road around the cavernous basin in the 
cliffs leaves only just room for the line of houses between 
the lake in the middle and the precipice behind. Only a 
few years later an avalanche overwhelmed the house of 
Captain Williams, and he and his family perished in it. 
During the days I was at the mine the news travelled by 
grapevine telegraph that the Mission doctor from Eng- 
land had come to the village, and every one took 
advantage of it. The plan there was to pay so much 
per month, well or ill, for the doctor. The work was 
easy at first, but by the time I left every living being 
seemed to me to have contracted some disease. For each 
succeeding day my surgery got fuller, until on the last 
morning even the yard and road contained waiting pa- 
tients. Whose fault it was has always been a problem 
to me; but it added a fresh reason for wishing to leave 
punctually, so that one might not risk outliving one's 
reputation; 

In October, 1899, I wrote to my mother: "We have 
just steamed into Battle Harbour and guns and flags 
gave us a welcome after our three years' absence. The 
hospital was full and looked splendid. What a change 
from the day, now seven years ago, that we first landed 
and had only a partially finished house! What an oasis 
for patients from the bleak rocks outside! I never thought 
to remain so long in this country." 

Here we boarded the little Mission steamer, but no 
human agency is perfect, and even the Julia Sheriden 



194 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

had her faults. Her gait on this fall voyage was sugges- 
tive of inebriety, and at times gave rise to the anxious 
sensations one experiences when one sees a poor victim 
of the saloon returning home along a pavement near 
much traflSc. 

While in England we had received letters from the 
north coast of Newfoundland, begging us to again in- 
clude their shores in our visits, and especially to establish 
a definite winter station at St. Anthony. The people 
claimed, and rightly, to be very poor. One man with a 
large family, whom I knew well, as he had acted guide 
for me on hunting expeditions, wrote: "Come and start 
a station here if you can. My family and I are starving." 
Dr. Aspland wrote that every one was strongly in favour 
of our taking up a Mission hospital in North Newfound- 
land. We felt that we should certainly reach a very large 
number of people whom we now failed to touch, and 
that careful inquiries should be made. 

Life on the French shore has been a struggle with too 
many families to keep off actual starvation. For in- 
stance, one winter at St. Anthony a man with a large 
family, and a fine, capable, self-respecting fellow, was 
nine days without tasting any flour or bread, or anything 
besides roast seal meat. Others were even worse off, for 
this man was a keen hunter, and with his rickety old 
single-barrel, boy's muzzle-loading gun used to wander 
alone far out over the frozen sea, with an empty stomach 
as well, trying to get a seal or a bird for his family. At 
last he shot a square flipper seal and dragged it home. 
The rumour of his having killed it preceded his arrival, 
and even while skinning it a crowd of hungry men were 
waiting for their share of the fat. Not that any was due 
to them, but here there is a dehghtful semi-community 
of goods. 



IN THE BRITISH ISLES 195 

Fish was then only fetching two or three dollars a 
hundredweight, salted and dried. The price of necessities 
depended on the conscience of the individual supplier 
and the ignorance of the people. The truck system was 
universal; thrift at a discount — and the sin of Ananias 
an all too common one; that is, taking supplies from one 
man and returning to him only part of the catch. The 
people in the north end of Newfoundland and Labrador 
were very largely illiterate; the sectarian schools split up 
the grants for teachers — as they still most unfortunately 
do — and miserable salaries, permitting teachers only 
for a few months at a time, were the rule. 

I had once spent a fortnight at St. Anthony, having 
taken refuge there in the Princess May when I was sup- 
posed to be lost by those who were cut off from communi- 
cation with us. I had also looked in there each summer 
to see a few patients. My original idea was to get a winter 
place established for our Indian Harbour staff, and I pro- 
posed opening up there each October when Indian Har- 
bour closed, and closing in June when navigation was 
reopened. Battle Harbour again accessible, and when the 
man-of-war doctors are more on this section of the coast. 

The snow was deep on the ground long before our 
voyage ended. There is always a romantic charm about 
cruising in the fall of the year on the Labrador. The long 
nights and the heavy gales add to the interest of the 
day's work. The shelter of the islands becomes a positive 
joy; the sense of safety in the harbours and fjords is as 
real a pleasure as the artificial attractions of civilization. 
The tang of the air, the young ice that makes every night, 
the fantastic midnight dances of the November auroras 
in the winter sky, all make one forget the petty worries 
of the daily round. 

As Beattie agreed to stay with me it was with real 



196 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

keenness to sample a sub-arctic winter that in November 
we disembarked from the Julia Sheriden. We made only 
the simplest preparations, renting a couple of rooms in 
the chief trader's house and hiring my former guide as 
dog-driver. 



CHAPTER XI 

FIRST WINTER AT ST. ANTHONY 

Not one of the many who have wintered with us in the 
North has failed to love our frozen season. To me it was 
one long delight. The dog-driving, the intimate relation- 
ships with the people on whom one was so often abso- 
lutely dependent, the opportunity to use to the real help 
of good people in distress the thousand and one small 
things which we had learned — all these made the knowl- 
edge that we were shut off from the outside world rather 
a pleasure than a cause for regret. 

Calls for the doctor were constant. I spent but three 
Sundays at home the whole time, and my records showed 
fifteen hundred miles covered with dogs. 

The Eskimo dog is so strong and enduring that he is 
the doyen of traction power in the North, when long 
distances and staying qualities are required. But for 
short, sharp dashes of twenty to thirty miles the lighter 
built and more vivacious Straits dog is the speedier and 
certainly the less wolfish. We have attempted cross- 
breeding our somewhat squat-legged Eskimo dogs with 
Kentucky wolf hounds, to combine speed with endurance. 
The mail-carrier from Fullerton to Winnipeg found that 
combination very desirable. With us, however, it did not 
succeed. The pups were lank and weedy and not nearly 
so capable as the ordinary Straits breed. 

The real Labrador dog is a very slightly modified wolf. 
A good specimen stands two feet six inches, or even two 
feet eight inches high at the shoulder, measures over six 
feet six inches from the tip of the nose to the tip of the 
tail, and will scale a hundred pounds. The hair is thick 



198 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

and straight; the ears are pointed and stand directly up. 
The large, bushy tail curves completely over on to the 
back, and is always carried erect. The colour is generally 
tawny, like that of a gray wolf, with no distinctive mark- 
ings. The general resemblance to wolves is so great that 
at Davis Inlet, where wolves come out frequently in 
winter, the factor has seen his team mixed with a pack 
of wolves on the beach in front of the door, and yet 
could not shoot, being unable to distinguish one from 
the other. The Eskimo dog never barks, but howls 
exactly hke a wolf, in sitting posture with the head up- 
turned. The Labrador wolf has never been known to 
kill a man, but during the years I have spent in that 
country I have known the dogs to kill two children 
and one man, and to eat the body of another. Our dogs 
have little or no fear, and unhke the wolves, will un- 
hesitatingly attack even the largest polar bear. 

No amount of dry cold seems to affect the dogs. At 
50° F. below zero, a dog will lie out on the ice and sleep 
without danger of frost-bite. He may climb out of the 
sea with ice forming all over his fur, but he seems not 
to mind one iota. I have seen his breath freeze so over 
his face that he had to rub the coating off his eyes with 
his paws to enable him to see the track. 

The dogs have a wonderful instinct for finding their 
way under almost insurmountable difficulties, and they 
have oftentimes been the means of saving the lives of 
their masters. Once I was driving a distance of seventy 
miles across country. The path was untravelled for 
the winter, and was only a direction, not being cut 
or blazed. The leading dog had been once across the 
previous year with the doctor. The "going" had then 
been very bad; with snow and fog the journey had 
taken three days. A large part of the way lay across 



FIRST WINTER AT ST. ANTHONY 139 

wide frozen lakes, and then through woods. As I had 
never been that way before I had to leave it to the dog. 
Without a single fault, as far as we knew, he took us 
across, and we accomplished the whole journey in twelve 
hours, including one and a half hours for rest and lunch. 

The distance travelled and the average speed at- 
tained depends largely on other factors than the dog 
power. We have covered seventy-five miles in a day with 
comfort; we have done five with difficulty. Ordinary 
speed would be six miles an hour, but I once did twenty- 
one miles in two hours and a quarter over level ice. 
Sails can sometimes be used with advantage on the 
komatik as an adjunct. The whole charm of dog-team 
driving lies in its infinite variety of experiences, the 
personal study of each dog, and the need for one^s 
strength, courage, and resourcefulness. 

South and north of the Httle village of St. Anthony 
where we had settled were other similar villages; and 
we decided that we could make a round tour every 
second month at least. We soon found, however, a great 
difficulty in getting started, because we always had 
some patients in houses near about, whom we felt that 
we could not leave. So we selected a motherly woman, 
whom we had learned that we could trust to obey or- 
ders and not act on her own initiative and judgment, 
and trained her as best we could to deal with some of 
these sick people. Then, having borrowed and outfitted 
a couple of rooms in a friend 's house, we left our serious 
cases under her care, and started for a month's travel 
with all the optimism of youth. 

Weight on your komatik is a vital question, and not 
knowing for what you may be called upon, makes the 
outfitting an art. I give the experience of years. The 
sledge should be eleven feet long. Its runners should be 



200 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

constructed of black spruce grown in the Far North 
where wood grows slowly and is very tough, and yet 
quite light. The runners should be an inch thick, eleven 
inches high, and about twenty-six inches apart, the 
bottoms rising at the back half an inch, as well as at 
the front toward the horns. The laths are fastened 
on with alternate diagonal lashings, are two inches 
wide, and close together. Such a komatik will "work" 
like a snake, adapting itself to the inequalities of the 
ground, and will not spread or "buckle." Long nails 
are driven up right through the runners, and clinched 
on the top to prevent splitting. The runners should be 
shod with spring steel, one inch wide; and a second 
runner, two and a half inches wide, may be put be- 
tween the lower one and the wood, to hold up the sledge 
when the snow is soft. Thus one has on both a skate 
and a snowshoe at once. The dogs' traces should be 
of skin and fastened with toggles or buttons to the bow- 
line. Dog food must be distributed along the komatik 
trail in summer — though the people will make great 
sacrifices to feed "the Doctor's team." 

Clothing must be light; to perspire in cold weather 
is unpardonable, for it will freeze inside your clothes 
at night. Fortunately warmth depends only on keeping 
heat in; and we find an impervious, light, dressed can- 
vas best. The kossak should be made with, so to speak, 
no neck through which the heat which one produces 
can leak out. The headpiece must be attached to the 
tunic, which also clips tight round the wrists and round 
the waist to retain the heat. The edges may be bound 
with fur, especially about the hood, so as to be soft and 
tight about the face, and to keep the air out. The Es- 
kimo cuts his own hair so as to fill that function. Light 
sealskin boots are best for all weathers, but in very cold. 



FIRST WINTER AT ST. ANTHONY 201 

dry seasons, deerskin dressed very soft is warmer. The 
skin boot should be sewn with sinew which swells in 
water and thus keeps the stitches water-tight. These 
skin boots are made by the Eskimo women who chew 
the edges of the skin to make them soft before sewing 
them with deer sinew. The Httle Eskimo girls on the 
North Labrador coast are proficient in the art of chewing, 
as they are brought up from childhood to help their 
mothers in this way, the women having invariably lost 
their teeth at a very early age. 

A hght rifle should always be lashed on the komatik, 
as a rabbit, a partridge, or a deer gives often a light to 
the eyes with the fresh proteids they afford, like Jona- 
than's wild honey. In these temperatures, with the 
muscular exercise required, my strictest of vegetarian 
friends should permit us to bow in the House of Rimmon. 
One day while crossing a bay I noticed some seals 
popping up their heads out of the water beyond the 
ice edge. I had a fine leading dog bearing the unroman- 
tic name of Podge, and pure white in colour. But he 
was an excellent water dog, trained not only to go for 
birds, but to dive under water for sunken seals. Owing 
to their increasing fat in winter, seals as a rule fioat, 
though they invariably sink in summer. On this particu- 
lar occasion, having hitched up the team we crept out to 
the ice edge. Podge following at my heels. Lying still 
on the ice, and just occasionally Hfting and waggling 
one's leg when the seal put up his head, he mistook 
one for a basking brother, and being a very curious 
animal, he again dived, and came up a few feet away. 
We shot two, both of which Podge dived after and re- 
trieved, to the unbounded joy both of ourselves and his 
four-footed chiuns, who more than gladly shared the 
carcasses with him later. 



A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

A friend, returning from an island, was jogging quietly 
along on the bay ice, when his team suddenly went 
wild. A bear had crossed close ahead, and before he 
could unlash his rifle the komatik had dashed right 
onto the animal, who, instead of rimning, stood up and 
showed fight. The team were all around him, rapidly 
snarling themselves up in their own traces. He had just 
time to draw his hunting knife across the traces and so 
save the dogs, caring much more for them than he did 
for the prey. Whilst his dogs held the attention of 
the bear, he was able, though only a few feet away, to 
unlash his rifle at his leisure, and very soon ended the 
conflict. 

A gun, however, is a temptation, even to a doctor, 
and nearly cost one of my colleagues his life. He was 
crossing a big divide, or neck of land, between bays, 
and was twenty miles from anywhere, when his dogs 
took the trail of some deer, which were evidently not 
far off. Being short of fresh food, he hitched up hrs 
team, and also his pilot's team, leaving only his boy 
driver in charge, while the men pursued the caribou. 
He enjoined the boy very strictly not to move on any 
account. By an odd freak a sudden snowstorm swept 
out of a clear sky just after they left. They missed their 
way, and two days later, starving and tired out, they 
found their first refuge, a small house many miles from 
the spot where they had left the sledges. When, how- 
ever, they sent a relief team to find the komatiks, they 
discovered the boy still "standing by" his charge. 

When crossing wide stretches of country we are often 
obliged to camp if it comes on dark. It is quite impossible 
to navigate rough country when one cannot see stumps, 
windfalls, or snags; and I have more than once, while 
caught in a forest looking for our tilt, been obliged to 



FIRST WINTER AT ST. ANTHONY 203 

walk ahead with a light, and even to search the snow 
for tracks with the help of matches, when one's torch 
has carelessly been left at home. On one occasion, hav- 
ing stopped om* team in deep snow at nightfall, we left 
it in the woods to walk out to a village, only five or six 
miles distant, on our snowshoes. We entirely lost our 
way, and ended up at the foot of some steep cliffs which 
we had climbed down, thinking that our destination 
lay at their feet. The storm of the day had broken the 
sea ice from the land, and we could not get round the 
base of the cliffs, though we could see the village lights 
twinkling away, only a mile or two across the bay. 
Climbing steep hills through dense woods in deep snow 
in the dark calls for some endurance, especially as a 
white snow-bank looks like an open space through the 
dark trees. I have actually stuck my face into a per- 
pendicular bluff, thinking that I was just coming out 
into the open. Oddly enough, when after much struggling 
we had mounted the hill, we heard voices, and suddenly 
met two men, who had also been astray all day, but 
now knew the way home. They were "all in" for want 
of food, and preferred camping for the night. A good 
fire and some chunks of sweet cake so greatly restored 
them, however, that we got under way again in a couple 
of hours, further stimulated to do so by the bitter cold, 
against which, in the dark, we could not make ade- 
quate shelter. Moreover, we had perspired with the 
violent exercise and our clothes were freezing from the 
inside out. 

You must always carry an axe, not only for firewood, 
but for getting water — unless you wish to boil snow, 
which is a slow process, and apt to burn your kettle. 
Also when you have either lost the trail or there is none, 
you must have an axe to clear a track as you march 



204 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

ahead of your dogs. Then there is, of course, the un- 
fortunate question of food. Buns baked with chopped 
pork in them give one fine energy-producing material, 
and do not freeze. A sweet hard biscuit is made on the 
coast which is excellent in one's pocket. Cocoa, cooked 
pork fat, stick chocolate, are all good to have. Our sealers 
carry dry oatmeal and sugar in their "nonny bags," 
which, mixed with snow, assuage their thirst and hunger 
as well. Pork and beans in tins are good, but they freeze 
badly. I have boiled a tin in our kettle for fifteen minutes, 
and then found a lump of ice in the middle of the sub- 
stance when it was turned out into the dish. 

Winter travelling on this coast oftentimes involves 
considerable hardships, as when once our doctor lost 
the track and he and his men had to spend several nights 
in the woods. They were so reduced by hunger that they 
were obliged to chew pieces of green sealskin which they 
cut from their boots and to broil their skin gloves over 
a fire which they had kindled. 

One great joy which comes with the work is the sym- 
pathy one gets with the really poor, whether in intelli- 
gence, physical make-up, or worldly assets. One learns 
how simple needs and simple lives preserve simple vir- 
tues that get lost in the crush of advancing civilization. 
Many and many a time have the poor people by the way- 
side refused a penny for their trouble. On one occasion 
I came in the middle of the night to a poor man 's house. 
He was in bed and the lights out, and it was bitter cold. 
He got out of bed in a trice and went down to his stage 
carrying an old hurricane lantern to feed my dogs, while 
his wife, after he had lit a fire in the freezing cold room, 
busied herself making me some cocoa. Milk and sugar 
were provided, and not till long afterwards did I know 
that it was a special little hoard kept for visitors. Later 



FIRST WINTER AT ST. ANTHONY 205 

I was sent to bed — quite unaware that the good folk 
had spent the first part of the night in it, and were now 
themselves on the neighbouring floor. Nor would a sou's 
retiu-n be asked. "It's the way of t' coast," the good 
fellow assured me. 

Another time my host for the night had gone when I 
rose for breakfast. I found that he had taken the road 
which I was intending to travel to the next village, some 
fourteen miles distant, just to break and mark a trail 
for us as we did not know the way; and secondly to 
carry some milk and sugar to "save the face" of my 
prospective host for the next day, who had "made a 
bad voyage" that year. Still another time no less than 
forty men from Conche marched ahead on a twenty- 
mile track to make it possible for our team to travel 
quickly to a neighbouring settlement. 

Often I have thought how many of these things would 
I do for my poorer friends. We who speak glibly of the 
need of love for our neighbours as being before that for 
ourselves, would we share a bed, a room, or give hos- 
pitality to strangers even in our kitchens, after they 
had awakened us in the middle of the night by slinging 
snowballs at our bedroom windows? 

One day that winter a father of eight children sent 
in from a neighbouring island for immediate help. His 
gun had gone off while his hand was on the muzzle, and 
practically blown it to pieces. To treat him ten miles 
away on that island was impossible, so we brought him 
in for operation. To stop the bleeding he had plunged 
his hand into a flour barrel and then tied it up in a bag, 
and as a result the wounded arm was poisoned way up 
above the elbow. He preferred death to losing his right 
arm. Day and night for weeks our nurse tended him, as 
he hovered between life and death with general blood 



206 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

poisoning. Slowly his fine constitution brought him 
through, and at last a secondary operation for repair 
became possible. We took chances on bone-grafting to 
form a hand; and he was left with a flipper like a seal's, 
able, however, to oppose one long index finger and "nip 
a line" when he fished. But there was no skin for it. So 
Dr. Beattie and I shared the honours of supplying some. 
Pat — for that was his name — has been a veritable 
apostle of the hospital ever since, and has undoubtedly 
been the means of enabling others to risk the danger 
of our suspected proselytizing. For though he had Eng- 
lish Episcopal skin on the palm of his hand and Scotch 
Presbyterian skin on the back, the rest of him still re- 
mained a devout Roman Catholic. 

Another somewhat parallel case occurred the following 
year, when a dear old Catholic lady was hauled fifty 
miles over the snow by her two stalwart sons, to have 
her leg removed for tubercular disease of the ankle. She 
did exceedingly well, and the only puzzle which we 
could not solve was where to raise the necessary hun- 
dred dollars for a new leg — for her disposition, even 
more than her necessity, compelled her to move about. 
While lecturing that winter in America, I asked friends 
to donate to me any of their old legs which they no 
longer needed, and soon I foimd myself the happy jx)s- 
sessor of two good wooden limbs, one of which exactly 
suited my requirements. A departed Methodist had 
left it, and the wife's clergyman, a Congregationalist, 
had handed it to me, an Episcopalian, and I had the 
joy of seeing it a real blessing to as good a Roman Ca- 
tholic as I know. As the priest says, there is now at least 
one Protestant leg established in his parish. 

We once reached a house at midnight, found a boy 
with a broken thigh, and had to begin work by thawing 



FIRST WINTER AT ST. ANTHONY 207 

out frozen board in order to plane it for splints, then 
pad and fix it, and finally give chloroform on the kitchen 
table. On another occasion we had to knock down a 
partition in a tiny cottage, make a full-length wooden 
bath, pitching the seams to make it water-tight, in order 
to treat a severe cellulitis. Now it would be a maternity 
case, now a dental one, now a gunshot wound or an axe 
cut with severed tendons to adjust, now pneumonia, 
when often in solitary and unlearned homes, we would 
ourselves do the nursing and especially the cooking, 
as that art for the sick is entirely uncultivated on the 
coast. 

The following winter I lectured in England and then 
crossed in the early spring to the United States and lec- 
tured both there and in Canada, receiving great kind- 
ness and much help for the work. 

As I have stated in the previous chapter we had raised, 
largely through the generosity of Lord Strathcona, the 
money for a suitable little hospital steamer, and she 
had been built to our design in England. I had steamed 
her round to our fitting yard at Great Yarmouth, and 
had her fitted for our w^ork before sailing. While I was 
in America, my old Newfoundland crew went across 
and fetched her over, so that June found us once more 
cruising the Labrador coast. 

While working with the large fleet of schooners, which 
at that time fished in August and September from Cape 
Mugford to Hudson Bay Straits, I visited as usual the 
five stations of the Moravian Brethren. They were 
looking for a new place to put a station, and at their 
request I took their representative to Cape Chidley in 
the Strathcona. 

This northern end of Labrador is extremely interesting 
to cruise. The great Appalachian Mountain Range runs 



208 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

out here right to the water edge, and forms a marvellous 
sea-front of embattled cliffs from two thousand to three 
thousand feet in height. The narrow passages which 
here and there run far into the mountains, and repre- 
sent old valleys scooped out by ice action, are dominated 
all along by frowning peaks, whose pointed summits 
betray the fact that they overtopped the ice stream in 
the glacial age. The sharp precipices and weather-worn 
sides are picked out by coloured lichens, and tiny cold- 
proof Arctic plants, and these, with the deep blue water 
and unknown vistas that keep constantly opening up 
as one steams along the almost fathomless fjords, afford 
a fascination beyond measure. 

Once before in the Sir Donald we had tried to navi- 
gate the narrow run that cuts off the island on which 
Cape Chidley stands from the mainland of Labrador, 
but had missed the way among the many openings, and 
only noted from a hilltop the course we should have 
taken, by the boiling current which we saw below, whose 
vicious whirlpools like miniature maelstroms poured like 
a dashing torrent from Ungava Bay into the Atlantic. 

It was, however, with our hearts somewhere near our 
mouths that we made an attempt to get through this 
year, for we knew nothing of the depth, except that the 
Eskimos had told us that large icebergs drove through 
at times. We could steam nine knots, and we essayed 
to cover the tide, which we found against us, as we 
neared the narrowest part, which is scarcely one hun- 
dred yards wide. The current carried us bodily astern, 
however, and glad enough we were to drive stern fore- 
most into a cove on one side and find thirteen fathoms 
of water to hold on in till the tide should turn. When 
at last it did turn, and got under way, it fairly took us 
in its teeth, and we shot through, an impotent plaything 



FIRST WINTER AT ST, ANTHONY 209 

on the heaving bosom of the resistless waters. We re- 
turned safely, with a site selected and a fair chart of 
the "Tickle" (Grenfell Tickle). 

When winter closed in, I arranged for an old friend, 
a clerk of the Hudson Bay Company, to stay with me 
at St. Anthony, and once more we settled down in rooms 
hired in a cottage. We had a driver, a team of dogs, and 
an arrangement with a paternal Government to help 
out by making an allowance of twenty-five cents for 
medicine for such patients as could not themselves pay 
that amount, and in those days the number was quite 
large. 

When early spring came the hospital question re- 
vived. An expedition into the woods was arranged, and 
with a hundred men and thrice as many dogs, we camped 
in the trees, and at the end of the fortnight came home 
hauling behind us the material for a thirty-six by thirty- 
six hospital. Being entirely new to us it proved a very 
happy experience. We were quartermasters and general 
providers. Our kitchen was dug down in thick woods 
through six feet of snow, and our main reliance was 
on boiled "doughboys" — the "sinkers" among which, 
with a slice of fat pork or a basin of bird soup, were 
as popular as lobster a la Newburg at Delmonico's or 
Sherry's. 

The next summer we had trouble with a form of self- 
ishness which I have always heartily hated — the li- 
quor traffic. Suppose we do allow that a man has a right 
to degrade his body with swallowing alcohol, he cer- 
tainly has no more right to lure others to their destruction 
for money than a filibuster has a right to spend his money 
in gunpowder and shoot his fellow countrymen. To our 
great chagrin we found that an important neighbour 
near one of our hospitals was selling intoxicants to the 



210 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

people — girls and men. One girl found drunk on the 
hillside brought home to me the cost of this man's right 
to "do as he hked." We promptly declared war, and I 
thanked God who had made "my hands to war, and 
my fingers to fight" — when that is the only way to 
resist the Devil successfully and to hasten the kingdom 
of peace. 

This man and I had had several disagreements, and 
I had been warned not to land on the premises on pain 
of being "chucked into the sea." But when I tested 
the matter out by landing quite alone from a row- 
boat, after a "few wor-r-r-ds" his coast-born hospi- 
tality overcame him, and as his bell sounded the dinner 
call, he promptly invited me to dine with him. I knew 
that he would not poison the food, and soon we were 
glowering at one another over his own table — where 
his painful efiForts to convince me that he was right 
absolutely demonstrated the exact opposite. 

My chance came that summer. We were steaming to 
our Northern hospital from the deep bay which runs 
in a hundred and fifty miles. About twenty miles from 
the mouth a boat hailed us out of the darkness, and we 
stopped and took aboard a wrecked crew of three men. 
They had struck our friend's well-insured old steam 
launch on a shoal and she had sunk under them. We 
took them aboard, boat and all, wrote down carefully 
their tale of woe, and then put the steamer about, 
pushed as near the wreck as we dared and anchored. 
Her skipper came forward and asked me what I in- 
tended doing, and I told him I was going to survey the 
wreck. A little later he again came to ask permission to 
go aboard the wreck to look for something he had for- 
gotten. I told him certainly not. Just before sunrise the 
watch called me and said that the wrecked crew had 



FIRST WINTER AT ST. ANTHONY 211 

launched their boat, and were rowing toward the steamer. 
"Launch ours at once, and drive them back" was an 
order which our boys obeyed with alacrity and zest. It 
was a very uneasy three men who faced me when they 
returned. They were full of bluff at what they would do 
for having their liberties thus interfered with, but ob- 
viously uneasy at heart. 

With some labour we discovered that the water only 
entered the wreck at low tide and forward; so by buoy- 
ing her with casks, tearing up her ballast deck, and 
using our own pumps as well as buckets — at which all 
hands of my crew worked with a good will, we at last 
found the hole. It was round. There were no splinters 
on the inside. We made a huge bung from a stick of 
wood, plugged the opening, finished pumping her out, 
and before dark had her floating alongside us. Late that 
night we were once more anchored — this time opposite 
the dwelling-house of my friend the owner. We immedi- 
ately went ashore and woke him up. There is a great 
deal in doing things at the psychological moment; and 
by midnight I had a deed duly drawn up, signed and 
sealed, selling me the steamer for fifty cents. I still see 
the look in his eyes as he gave me fifty cents change from 
a dollar. He was a self-made man, had acquired con- 
siderable money, and was keen as a ferret at business. 
The deed was to me a confession that he was in the plot 
for barratry, to murder the boat for her insurance. 

On our trip South we picked up the small steamer, 
and towing her to a Hudson Bay Company's Post we 
put her "on the hard," photographed the hole, with all 
the splintering on the outside, and had a proper survey of 
the hull made by the Company's shipwright. The 
unanimous verdict was "wilful murder." In the fall as 
her own best witness, we tried to tow her to St. John's, 



212 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

but in a heavy breeze of wind and thick snow we lost 
her at sea — and with her our own case as well. The 
law decided that there was no evidence, and my friend, 
making out that he had lost the boat and the insur- 
ance, threatened to sue me for the value. 

The sequel of the story may as well be told here. A 
year or so later I had just returned from Labrador. It 
used to be said always that our boat "brought up the 
keel of the Labrador"; but this year our friend had 
remained until every one else had gone. Just as we were 
about to leave for England, the papers in St. John's 
published the news of the loss of a large foreign-going 
vessel, laden with fish for the Mediterranean, near the 
very spot where our friend lived. On a visit a little later 
to the shipping office I found the event described in the 
graphic words of the skipper and mate. Our friend the 
consignee had himself been on board at the time the 
"accident" occurred. After prodigies of valour they had 
been forced to leave the ship, condemn her, and put her 
up for sale. Our friend, the only buyer at such a time on 
the coast, had bought her in for eighty dollars. 

It was the end of November, and already a great deal 
of ice had made. The place was six hundred miles north. 
The expense of trying to save the ship would be great. 
But was she really lost? The heroics sounded too good 
to be true. All life is a venture. Why not take one in the 
cause of righteousness. f* That night in a chartered steam 
trawler, with a trusty diver, we steamed out of the har- 
bour, steering north. Our skipper was the sea rival of 
the famous Captain Blandford; and the way he drove 
his little craft, with the ice inches thick from the driving 
spray all over the bridge and blocking the chart-room 
windows, made one glad to know that the good sea 
genius of the English was still so well preserved. 



FIRST WINTER AT ST. ANTHONY 213 

When our distance was run down we hauled in for 
the land, but had to lay "hove to" (with the ship 
sugared like a Christmas cake), as we were unable 
to recognize our position in the drifting snow. At length 
we located the islands, and never shall I forget as we 
drew near hearing the watch call out, "A ship's top- 
masts over the land." It was the wreck we were looking 
for. 

It took some hours to cut through the ice in which 
she lay, before ever we could get aboard; and even the 
old skipper showed excitement when at last we stood 
on her deck. Needless to say, she was not upside down, 
nor was she damaged in any way, though she was com- 
pletely stripped of all running gear. The diver reported 
no damage to her bottom, while the mate reported the 
fish in her hold dry, and the hatches still tightly clewed, 
never having been stirred. 

With much hearty good-will our crew jettisoned fish 
enough into our own vessel to float the craft. Fearing 
that so late in the year we might fail to tow her safely 
so far, and remembering the outcome of our losing the 
launch, we opened the stores on the island, and finding 
both block and sails, neatly labelled and stowed away, 
we soon had our prize not only refitted for sea, but also 
stocked with food, water, chart, and compass and all 
essentials for a voyage across the Atlantic, if she were 
to break loose and we to lose her. The last orders were 
to the mate, who was put on board her with a crew, "If 
not St. John's then Liverpool." 

No such expedient, however, proved necessary. 
Though we had sixty fathoms of anchor chain on each 
of our wire cables to the ship, we broke one in a seaway 
and had to haul under the lee of some cliffs and repair 
damages. Often for hours together the vessel by day 



214 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

and her lights by night would disappear, and our hearts 
would jump into our mouths for fear we might yet fail. 
But at last, with all our bunting up, and both ships 
dressed as if for a holiday, we proudly entered the Nar- 
rows of St. John's, the cynosure of all eyes. The skipper 
and our friend had gone to England, so the Govern- 
ment had them extradited. The captain, who was ill 
with a fatal disease, made a full confession, and both 
men were sent to prison. 

That was how we "went dry" in our section of La- 
brador. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE COOPERATIVE MOVEMENT 

Being a professional and not a business man, and 
having no acquaintance with the ways of trade, the 
importance of a new economic system as one of the 
most permanent messages of helpfulness to the coast 
was not at first obvious to me. But the ubiquitous bar- 
ter system, which always left the poor men the worst 
end of the bargain, is as subtle a danger as can face a 
community — subtle because it impoverishes and en- 
slaves the victims, and then makes them love their chains. 

As a magistrate I once heard a case where a poor man 
paid one hundred dollars in cash to his trader in the fall 
to get him a new net. The trader could not procure the 
twine, and when spring arrived the man came to get on 
credit his usual advance of "tings." From the bill for 
these the trader deducted the hundred dollars cash, 
upon which the man actually came to me as a justice 
of the peace to have him punished ! 

Lord Strathcona told me that in his day on this coast, 
when a man had made so good a hunt that he had pur- 
chased all he could think of, he would go round to the 
store again asking how much money was still due him. 
He would then take up purchases to exceed it by a 
moderate margin, saying that he liked to keep his name 
on the Company's books. In those days the people felt 
that they had the best part of the bargain if they were 
always a little in debt. The tendency to thrift was thus 
annihilated. The fishermen simply turned in all their 
catch to the merchant, and took what was coming to 
them as a matter of course. Many even were afraid to 



216 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

ask for certain supplies. This fact often became evident 
when we were trying to order special diets — the pa- 
tient would reply, " Our trader won't give out that." 
Naturally the whole system horrified us, as being the 
nearest possible approach to English slavery, for the 
poor man was in constant fear that the merchant "will 
turn me off." On the other hand, the traders took pre- 
cautions that their "dealers" should not be able to 
leave them, such as not selling them traps outright for 
furring, or nets for fishing, but only loaning them, and 
having them periodically returned. This method in- 
sured their securing all the fur caught, because legally a 
share of the catch belonged to them in return for the 
loan of the trap. They thus completely minimized the 
chance for competition, which is "the life of trade." 

Soon after my arrival on the coast I saw the old Hud- 
son Bay Company's plan of paying in bone counters of 
various colours; and a large lumber company paying 
its wages in tin money, stamped "Only valuable at our 
store." If, to counteract this handicap, the men sold 
fish or fur for cash to outsiders, and their suppliers found 
it out, they would punish them severely. 

On another occasion, sitting by me on a gunning point 
where we were shooting ducks as they flew by on their 
fall migration, was a friend who had given me much 
help in building one of our hospitals. I suddenly noticed 
that he did not fire at a wonderful flock of eiders which 
went right over our heads. "What's the matter, Jim? " 
I asked. "I settled with the merchant to-day," he re- 
plied, "and he won't give me nothing for powder. A 
duck or two won't matter. 'T is the children I'm mind- 
ing." The fishery had been poor, and not having enough 
to meet his advances, he had sold a few quintals of fish 
for cash, so as to get things like milk which he would 



THE COOPERATIVE MOVEMENT 217 

not be allowed on winter credit, and had been caught 
doing so. He was a grown man and the father of four 
children. We went to his trader to find out how much 
he was in debt. The man's account on the books was 
shown us, and it read over three thousand dollars against 
our friend. It had been carried on for many years. A 
year or two later when the merchant himself went bank- 
rupt with a debt of $686,000 to the bank of which he 
was a director, the people of that village, some four 
hundred and eleven souls in all, owed his firm $64,000, 
an asset returned as value nil. The whole thing seemed 
a nightmare to any one who cared about these people. 
In Labrador no cereals are grown and the summer 
frosts make potato and turnip crops precarious, so that 
the tops of the latter are practically all the green food 
to which we can aspire — except for the few families 
who remain at the heads of the long bays all summer, 
far removed from the polar current. Furthermore, un- 
til some one invents a way to extract the fis^y taste 
from our fish oils, we must import our edible fats; for 
the Labrador dogs will not permit cows or even goats 
to five near them. I have heard only this week that a 
process has just been discovered in CaKfornia for making 
a pleasant tasting butter out of fish oil. Our "sweetness" 
must all be imported, for none of our native berries are 
naturally sweet, and we can grow no cultivated fruits. 
The same fact applies to cotton and wool. Thus nearly 
all our necessities of life have to be brought to us. Fire- 
wood, lumber, fish and game, boots or clothing of skins, 
are all that we can provide for ourselves. On the other 
hand, we must export our codfish, salmon, trout, whales, 
oil, fur, and in fact practically all our products. An ex- 
change medium is therefore imperative; and we must 
have some gauge like cash by which to measure, or else 



218 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

we shall lose on all transactions; for all the prices of 
both exports and imports fluctuate very rapidly, and 
besides this, we had then practically no way to find 
out what prices were maintaining in our markets. 

Government relief had failed to stop the evils of the 
barter system. In the opinion of thinking men it only 
made matters worse. We were therefore from every point 
of view encouraged to start the cooperative plan which 
had proved so successful in England. I still believe that 
the people are honest, and that the laziness of indolence, 
from the stigma of which it is often impossible to clear 
them, is due to despair and inability to work properly 
owing to imperfect nourishment. 

Things went from bad to worse as the years went by. 
The fact of the sealing steamers killing the young seals 
before they could swim greatly impoverished the Lab- 
rador inshore seal fishery. The prices of fish were so low 
that a man could scarcely catch enough to pay for his 
summer expenses out of it. 

With us the matter came to a head in a little fishing 
village called Red Bay, on the north side of the Straits 
of Belle Isle. When we ran in there on our last visit 
one fall, we found some of our good friends packed up 
and waiting on their stages to see if we would remove 
them from the coast. A meeting was called that night 
to consider the problem, and it was decided that the 
people must try to be their own merchants, accepting 
the risks and sharing the profits. The fisherman's and 
trapper's life is a gamble, and naturally, therefore, 
they like credit advances, for it makes the other man 
carry the risks. We then and there decided, however, 
to venture a cooperative store, hiring a schooner to 
bring our freight and carry our produce straight to 
market; and if necessary eat grass for a year or so. Alas, 



THE COOPERATIVE MOVEMENT 219 

after a year's saving the seventeen families could raise 
only eighty-five dollars among them for capital, and we 
had to loan them sufficient to obtain the first cargo. A 
young fisherman was chosen as secretary, and the store 
worked well from the beginning. That was in 1905. He 
is still secretary, and to-day in 1918 the five-dollar 
shares are worth one hundred and four dollars each, by 
the simple process of accumulation of profits. The loan 
has been repaid years ago. Not a barrow load of fish 
leaves the harbour except through the cooperative store. 
Due to it, the people have been able to tide over a series 
of bad fisheries; and every family is free of debt. 

At the time of the formation one most significant 
fact was that every shareholder insisted that his name 
must not be registered, for fear some one might find 
out that he owned cash. They were even opposed to a 
label on the building to signify that it was a store. How- 
ever, I chalked all over its face "Red Bay Cooperative 
Store." 

The whole effort met with very severe criticism, not 
to say hostility, at the hands of the smaller traders, 
but the larger merchants were most generous in their 
attitude, and though doubtful of the possibility of 
realizing a cash basis, were without exception favourable 
to the attempt. This store has been an unqualified suc- 
cess, only limited in its blessings by its lack of larger 
capital. It has enabled its members to live independently, 
free of debt and without want; while similar villages, 
both south and east and west, have been gradually de- 
leted by the people being forced to leave through ina- 
bility to meet their needs. 

During my first winter at St. Anthony, the young 
minister of the little church on more than one occasion 
happened to be visiting on his rounds in the very house 



220 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

where we were staying on ours, and the subject of co- 
operation was frequently discussed over the evening 
pipe with the friends in the place. He had himself been 
trading, and had so disliked the methods that he had 
retired. He would certainly help us to organize a store 
on the Newfoundland side of the Straits. 

At last the day arrived for the initial meeting. We 
gave notice everywhere. The chosen rendezvous was 
in a village fourteen miles north. The evening before, 
however, the minister sent word that he could not be 
present, as he had to go to a place twenty miles to the 
northwest to hold service. Knowing for how much his 
opinion counted in the minds of some of the people, this 
was a heavy blow, especially as the traders had notified 
me that they would all be on hand. Fortunately an in- 
genious suggestion was made — "He doesn't know the 
way. Persuade his driver, after starting out, to gradually 
work round and end up at the cooperative meeting." 
This was actually done, and our friend was present 
willy-nilly. He proved a broken reed, however, for in 
the face of the traders he went back on cooperation. 

As fortune would have it, our own komatik fell through 
the ice in taking a short cut across a bay, and we arrived 
late, having had to borrow some dry clothing from a 
fisherman on the way. Our trader friends had already 
appeared on the scene, and were joking the parson for 
being tricked, saying that evidently we had made a 
mistake and were really at Cape Norman, the place to 
which he had intended to go. 

It was a dark evening, crisp and cold, and himdreds of 
dogs that had hauled people from all over the country- 
side to the meeting made night dismal outside. We be- 
gan our meeting with prayer for guidance, wisdom, and 
good temper, for we knew that we should need them all 



THE COOPERATIVE MOVEMENT £21 

— and then we came down to statistics, prices, debts, 
possibilities, and the story of cooperation elsewhere. 

The little house was crammed to overflowing. But 
the fear of the old regime was heavy on the meeting. 
The traders occupied the whole time for speaking. Only 
one old fisherman spoke at all. He had been an over- 
seas sailor in his early days, and he surprised himself 
by turning orator. His effort elicited great applause. 
"Doctor — I means Mr. Chairman — if this here copper 
store buys a bar'l of flour in St. John's for five dollars, be 
it going to sell it to we fer ten? That's what us wants to 
know." 

Outside, after the meeting, Babel was let loose. The 
general opinion was that there must be something to it 
or the traders would not have so much to say against 
the project. The upshot of the matter was that for a long 
time no one could be found who would take the manager- 
ship; but at length the best-beloved fisherman on the 
shore stepped into the breach. He was not a scholar — 
in fact could scarcely read, write, and figure — but his 
pluck, optimism, and unselfishness carried him through. 

That little store has been preaching its vital truths 
ever since. It is a still small text, but it has had vast in- 
fluences for good. There has proved to be one difficulty. 
It is the custom on the coast to give all meals to travel- 
lers free, both men and dogs, and lodging to boot. Cus- 
tomers came from so far away that they had to stay over- 
night at least, and of course it was always Harry's house 
to which they went. The profit on a twenty-five cent 
purchase was slender under these circumstances, and 
as cash was scarce in those days, a twenty-five-cent 
purchase was not so rare as might be supposed. We there- 
fore printed, mounted, framed, and sent to our friend 
the legend, "No more free meals. Each meal will cost 



A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

ten cents." Later we received a most grateful reply from 
him in his merry way, saying that he had hung up the 
card in his parlour, but begging us not to defer visits 
if we had not the requisite amount, as he was permitted 
to give credit to that extent. But when next we suddenly 
"blew in" to Harry's house, the legend was hanging 
with its face to the wall. 

Our third store was seventy-five miles to the west- 
ward at a place called Flowers Cove. Here the parson 
came in with a will. Being a Church of England man, 
he was a more permanent resident, and, as he said," he 
was a poor man, but he would sell his extra pair of boots 
to be able to put one more share in the store." What 
was infinitely more important he put in his brains. 
Every one in that vicinity who had felt the slavery of the 
old system joined the venture. One poor Irishman walked 
several miles around the coast to catch me on my next 
visit, and secretly give me five dollars. '"Tis all I has 
in the world, Doctor, saving a bunch of children, but 
if it was ten times as large, you should have every cent 
of it for the store." "Thanks, Paddy, that's the talking 
that tells." For some years afterwards, every time that 
he knew I was making a visit to that part of the coast, 
he would come around seeking a private interview, and 
inquire after the health of "the copper store"; till he 
triumphantly brought another five dollars for a second 
share "out of my profits. Doctor." 

That store is now a limited liability company with a 
capital of ten thousand dollars owned entirely by the 
fishermen, it has paid consistently a ten per cent divi- 
dend every year, and is located in fine premises which 
it bought and owns outright. 

A fourth store followed near the lumber mill which 
we started to give winter labour at logging; but owing 



THE COOPERATIVE MOVEMENT 223 

to bad management and lack of ability to say "no" to 
men seeking credit, it fell into debt and we closed it 
up. Number five almost shared the same fate. Unable 
to get local talent to manage it, we hired a Canadian 
whose pretensions proved unequal to his responsibility. 
He was, however, found out in time to reorganize the 
store; but the loss which he had caused was heavy, and 
it was his notice of leaving for Canada which alone 
betrayed the truth to us. The most serious aspect of the 
matter was that many of the local fishermen lost confi- 
dence in the ability of the store to succeed, and return- 
ing to the credit system, they found it modified enough 
to appear to them a lamb instead of a wolf. However, 
number five is growing all the time again and will yet be 
a factor in the people's deliverance. 

Numbers six and seven were in poor and remote parts 
of Labrador, very small, and with insufficient capital 
and brains. One has closed permanently. They were sim- 
ply small stores under the care of one settler, who guar- 
anteed to charge the people only a fixed percentage 
over St. John's prices for goods, as the return for his 
responsibility. Number eight was the result of a night 
spent in a miserable shack on a lonely promontory called 
Adlavik. 

God forbid that I should judge traders or doctors or 
lawyers or priests by their profession or their intellectual 
attitude. There are noble men in all walks of life. Alas, 
some are more liable than others to yield to temptation, 
and the temptations to which they are exposed are more 
insistent. 

Number nine was on the extreme northern edge of the 
white settlers at Ford's Harbour. The story of it is too 
long to relate, but the trade there, in spite of many diffi- 
culties, still continues to preach a gospel and spell much 



A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

blessing to poor people. To help out, we have sent north 
to this station three of our boys from the orphanage, as 
they grew old enough to go out into the world for them- 
selves. 

One disaster, in the form of a shipwreck, overtook the 
fine fellow in charge of this most northerly venture. For 
the first time in his life he came south, to seek a wife, 
his former wife having succumbed to tuberculosis. He 
brought with him his year's products of fur and skin 
boots. The mail steamer on which he was travelling 
struck a rock off Battle Harbour, and most of his goods 
were lost uninsured, he himself gladly enough escaping 
with his life. 

It remained for our tenth venture to bring the hardest 
battle, and in a sense the greatest measure of success. 
Spurred by the benefits of the Red Bay store, the people 
of a little village about forty miles away determined to 
combine also. The result was a fine store near our hospital 
at Battle Harbour — which during the first' year did 
sixty thousand dollars' worth of business. This served to 
put a match to the explosive wrath of those whose oppo- 
sition hitherto had been that of rats behind a wainscot. 
They secured from their friends a Government commis- 
sion appointed to inquire into the work of the Mission 
as "a menace to honest trade." The leading petitioner 
had been the best of helpers to the first venture. When 
the traders affected by it had first boycotted the fish, he 
had sent his steamer and purchased it from the company. 
Now the boot was on the other leg. The Commission and 
even the lawyers have all told me that they were pre- 
judiced against the whole Mission by hearsay and mis- 
interpretations, before they even began their exhaustive 
inquiry. Their findings, however, were a complete refu- 
tation of all charges, and the best advertisement possible. 



THE COOPERATIVE MOVEMENT 225 

It would not be the time to say that the whole co- 
operative venture has been an unqualified success; but 
the causes of failure in each case have been perfectly 
obvious, and no fault of the system. Lack of business 
ability has been the main trouble, and the lack of cour- 
age and unity which everywhere characterizes mankind, 
but is perhaps more emphasized on a coast where fail- 
ure means starvation, and where the cooperative spirit 
has been rendered very difficult to arouse owing to mis- 
trust born of religious sectarianism and denominational 
schools. These all militate very strongly against that 
imity which alone can enable labour to come to its own 
without productive ability. 

There is one aspect for which we are particularly 
grateful. Politics, at any rate, has not been permitted to 
intrude, and the stress laid on the need of brotherliness, 
forbearance, and self -development — if ever these pro- 
ducers are to reap the rewards of being their own traders 
— has been very marked. Only thus can they share in 
the balance of profit which makes the difference between 
plenty and poverty on this isolated coast. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE MILL AND THE FOX FARM 

The argument for cooperation had been that life on the 
coast was not worth living under the credit system. A 
short feast and a long famine was the local epigram. If 
our profits could be maintained on the coast, and spent 
on the coast, then the next-to-nature Kfe had enough to 
offer in character as well as in maintenance to attract a 
permanent population, especially with the furring in 
winter. For the actual figures showed that good hunters 
made from a thousand to fifteen himdred dollars in a 
season, besides the salmon and cod fishery. There was, 
moreover, game for food, free firewood, water, homes, 
and no taxation except indirect in duties on their goods. 

These same conditions prevailed on the long, narrow 
slice of land known as the "French shore" in northern 
Newfoundland. There the people were more densely 
settled, the hinterland was small, and many therefore 
could not go furring. Moreover, the polar current, enter- 
ing the mouth of the Straits of Belle Isle, makes this 
section of land more liable to summer frosts, with a far 
worse climate than the Labrador bays, and gardening is 
less remunerative. We puzzled our brains for some way 
to add to our earning capacities, some cooperative pro- 
ductive as well as distributive enterprise. 

The poverty which I had witnessed in Canada Bay 
in North Newfoundland, some sixty miles south of St. 
Anthony Hospital, had left me very keen to do some- 
thing for that district which might really offer a solution 
of the problem. I had been told that there was plenty of 
timber to justify running a mill in the bay; but that no 



\ 



THE MILL AND THE FOX FARM 227 

sawmills paid in Newfoundland. This was emphasized 
in St. John's by my friends who still own the only venture 
out of the eleven which have operated in that city that 
has been able to continue. They have succeeded by 
adopting modern methods and erecting a factory for 
making furniture, so as to supply finished articles direct 
to their customers. We knew that in our case labour 
would be cheaper than ordinarily, for our labour in 
winter had generally to go begging. It was mainly this 
fact which finally induced us to make the attempt. 

Having talked the matter over with the people we 
secured from the Government a special grant, as the 
venture, if it succeeded, would relieve them of the ne- 
cessity of having poor-relief bills. The whole expense of 
the enterprise fell upon myself, for the Mission Board 
considered it outside their sphere; and already we had 
built St. Anthony Hospital in spite of the fact that they 
thought that we were undertaking more than they would 
be able to handle, and had discouraged it from the first. 

The people had no money to start a mill, and the cir- 
cumstances prohibited my asking aid from outside, so it 
was with considerable anxiety that we ordered a mill, as 
if it were a pound of chocolates, and arranged with two 
young friends to come out from England as volunteers, 
except for their expenses, to help us through with the 
new effort. At the same time there was three hundred 
dollars to pay for the necessary survey and line cutting, 
and supplies of food for the loggers for the winter. Houses 
must also be erected and furnished. 

Ignorance undoubtedly supplied us with the courage 
to begin. Personally I knew nothing whatever of mills, 
having never even seen one. Nor had I seen the grant of 
land, or selected a site for the building. This was left 
entirely to the people themselves; and as none of them 



228 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

had ever seen a mill either, we all felt a bit uneasy about 
our capacities. I had left orders with the captain of the 
Cooperator (our schooner) to fetch the mill and put it 
where the people told him; but when I heard that there 
was one piece which included the boiler which weighed 
three tons, it seemed to me that they could never handle 
it. We had no wharf ready to receive it and no boat 
capable of carrying it. I woke many times that summer 
wondering if it had not gone to the bottom while they 
were attempting the landing. There was no communica- 
tion whatever with them as we were six hundred miles 
farther north on our siunmer cruise; and we had not 
the slightest control over the circumstances in which we 
might become involved. 

It was late in the season and the snow was already 
deep on the ground when eventually we were piloted to 
the spot selected. It was nine miles up the bay on a well- 
wooded promontory of a side inlet. The water was deep 
to the shore and the harbour as safe as a house. The boys 
from England had arrived, and a small cottage had been 
erected, tucked away in the trees. It was very small, and 
very damp, the inside of the walls being white with 
frost in the morning until the fire had been under way 
for some time. But it was a merry crowd, emerging from 
various little hutlets around among the trees, which 
greeted the Strathcona. 

The big boiler, the "bugaboo" of my dreams all sum- 
mer, lay on the bank. "How did you get it there?" was 
my first query. "We warped the vessel close to the land, 
and then hove her close ashore and put skids from the 
rocks off to her. On these we sHd the boiler, all hands 
hauling it up with our tackles." 

Having left the few supplies which we had with us, for 
the Strathcona has no hold or carrying space, we re- 



THE MILL AND THE FOX FARM 229 

turned to the hospital, mighty grateful for the successful 
opening of the venture. The survey had been completed 
and accepted by the Government, and though unfor- 
tunately it was but very poorly marked, and we have 
had lots of trouble since, — as we have never been able 
to say exactly where our boundaries lie, nor even to find 
marks enough to follow over the original survey again, — 
yet it enabled us to get to work, which was all that we 
wanted at the moment. 

The fresh problems at the hospital, and the constant 
demands on our energies, made Christmas and New Year 
go by with our minds quite alienated from the cares of 
the new enterprise. But when after Christmas the dogs 
had safely carried us over many miles of snow-covered 
wastes, and our immediate patients gave us a chance to 
look farther afield, I began to wonder if we might not 
pay the mill a visit. By land it was only fifty miles dis- 
tant to the southward, possibly sixty if we had to go 
round the bays. The only difficulty about the trip was 
that there were no trails, and most of the way led through 
virgin forest, where windfalls and stumps and dense 
imdergrowth mixed with snow made the ordinary ob- 
stacle race a sprint in the open in comparison. We knew 
what it meant, because in our eagerness to begin our 
dog-driving when the first snow came, we had wandered 
over small trees crusted with snow, fallen through, and 
literally floundered about under the crust, unable to 
climb to the top again. It was the nearest thing to the 
sensations of a man who cannot swim struggling under 
the surface of the water. Moreover, on a tramp with the 
minister, he had gone through his snow racquets and 
actually lost the bows later, smashing them all up as he 
repeatedly fell through between logs and tree-trunks and 
"tuckamore." His summons for help and the idea that 



230 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

there were still eight miles to go still haunted me. On 
that occasion we had cut down some spruce boughs and 
improvised some huge webbed feet for ourselves, which 
had saved the situation; but whether they would have 
served for twenty or thirty miles, we could not tell. Not 
so long before a man named Casey, bringing his komatik 
down the steep hill at Conche, missed his footing and fell 
headlong by a bush into the snow. The heavy, loaded 
sledge ran over him and pressed him still farther into the 
bank. Struggling only made him sink the deeper, and an 
hour later the poor fellow was discovered smothered to 
death. 

No one knew the way. We could not hear of a single 
man who had ever gone across in winter, though some 
said that an old fellow who had lived farther south had 
once carried the mails that way. At length we could 
stand it no longer, and arranging with four men and two 
extra teams, we started off. We hoped to reach the mill 
in two days, but at the end of that time we were still 
trying to push through the tangle of these close-grown 
forests. To steer by compass sounded easy, but the 
wretched instrument seemed persistently to point to 
precipitous cliffs or impenetrable thickets. There were 
no barren hilltops after the jfirst twenty miles. Occasion- 
ally we would stop, climb a tree, and try to get a view. 
But climbing a conifer whose boughs are heavily laden 
with ice and snow is no joke, and gave very meagre re- 
turns. At last, however, we struck a high divide, and 
from an island in the centre of a lake, occupied only by 
two lone fir trees, we got a view both ways, showing the 
Cloudy Hills which towered over the south side of the 
bay in which the mill stood. 

A very high, densely wooded hill lay, however, directly 
in our path; and which way to get round it best none of 



THE MILL AND THE FOX FARM 231 

us knew. We "tossed up" and went to the eastward — 
the wrong side, of course. We soon struck a river, and at 
once surmised that if we followed it, it must bring us to 
the head of the bay, which meant only three miles of 
salt water ice to cover. Alas, the stream proved very' 
torrential. It leaped here and there over so many rapid 
falls that great canyons were left in the ice, and instead 
of being able to dash along as when first we struck it, we 
had painfully to pick our way between heavy ice-blocks, 
which sorely tangled up our traces, and our dogs ran 
great danger of being injured. Nor could we leave the 
river, for the banks were precipitous and utterly im- 
passable with undergrowth. At length when we came to 
a gorge where the boiling torrent was not even frozen, 
and as prospects of being washed under the ice became 
only too vivid, we were forced to cut our way out on the 
sloping sides. The task was great fun, but an exceed- 
ingly slow process. 

It was altogether an exciting and delightful trip. Now 
we have a good trail cut and blazed, which after some 
years of experience we have gradually straightened out, 
with two tilts by the roadside when the weather makes 
camping imperative, or when delay is caused by having 
helpless patients to haul, till now it is only a "joy-ride" 
to go through that beautiful country "on dogs." There 
is always a challenge, however, left in that trail — just 
enough to lend tang to the toil of it. Once, having missed 
the way in a blizzard, we had to camp on the snow with 
the thermometer standing at twenty below zero. The 
problem was all the more interesting as we struck only 
"taunt" timberwoods with no undergrowth to halt the 
wind. On another occasion we attempted to cross Hare 
Bay, and one of the dogs fell through the ice. There was 
a biting wind blowing, and it was ten degrees below zero. 



232 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

When we were a mile off the land I got off the sledge to 
try the ice edge, when suddenly it gave way, and in I fell. 
It did not take me long to get out — the best advice 
being to "keep cool." I had as hard a mile's running as 
ever I experienced, for my clothing was fast becoming 
like the armour of an ancient knight; and though in 
my youth I had been accustomed to break the ice 
in the morning to bathe, I had never run in a coat of 
mail. 

Never shall I forget dragging ourselves in among those 
big trees with our axes, and tumbling to sleep in a grave 
in the snow, in spite of the elements. In this hole in a 
sleeping-bag, protected by the light drift which blew in, 
one rested as comfortably as in a more conventional type 
of feather bed. Nor, when I think of De Quincey's idea 
of supreme happiness before the glowing logs, can I for- 
get that gorgeous blaze which the watch kept up by 
felling trees full length into the fire, so that our Yule 
logs were twenty feet long, and the ruddy glow and 
crackling warmth went smashing through the hurtling 
snowdrift. True, it was cold taking off our dripping 
clothing, which as it froze on us made progress as diffi- 
cult as if we were encased in armour. But dancing up 
and down before a huge fire in the crisp open air under 
God's blue sky gave as pleasing a reaction as doing the 
same thing in the dusty, germ-laden atmosphere of a 
ballroom in the small hours of the night, when one would 
better be in bed, if the joys of efficiency and accomplish- 
ment are the durable pleasure of life. 

It was a real picnic which we had at the mill. Our visit 
was as welcome as it was unexpected, and we celebrated 
it by the whole day off, when all hands went "rabbiting.'* 
When at the end, hot and tired, we gathered round a 
huge log fire in the woods and discussed boiling cocoa 



THE MILL AND THE FOX FARM 23S 

and pork buns, we all agreed that it had been a day 
worth living for. 

Logging had progi'essed favourably. Logs were close 
at hand; and the whole enterprise spelled cash coming 
in that the people had never earned before. The time 
had also arrived to prepare the machinery for cutting the 
timber boxes were being impacked, and weird iron 
"parts" revealed to us, that had all the interest of a 
Chinese puzzle, with the added pleasure of knowing that 
they stood for much if we solved the problems rightly. 

When next we saw the mill it was spring, and the 
puflfing smoke and white heaps of lumber that graced 
the point and met our vision as we rounded Breakheart 
Point will not soon be forgotten. Only one trouble had 
proved insurmountable. The log-hauler would not de- 
liver the goods to the rotary saw. Later, with the knowl- 
edge that the whole apparatus was upside down, it did 
not seem so surprising after all. One accident also marred 
the year's record. While a party of children had been 
crossing the ice in the harbour to school, a treacherous 
rapid had caused it to give way and leave a number of 
them in the water. One of my English volunteers, being 
a first-class athlete, had by swimming saved five lives, 
but two had been lost, and the young fellow himself so 
badly chilled that it had taken the hot body of one of 
the fathers of the rescued children, wrapped up in bed 
with him in lieu of a hot-water bottle, to restore his 
circulation. 

The second fall was our hardest period. The bills for 
our lumber sold had not been paid in time for us to pur- 
chase the absolutely essential stock of food for the winter; 
and if we could not get a store of food, we knew that our 
men could not go logging. It was food, not cash, which 
they needed in the months when their own slender stock 



234 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

of provisions gave out, and when all communication was 
cut off by the frozen sea. 

For a venture which seemed to us problematical in its 
outcome, we did not dare to borrow money or to induce 
friends to invest; and of course Mission funds were not 
available. For the day has not yet arrived when all those 
who seek by their gifts to hasten the coming of the King- 
dom of God on earth recognize that to give the oppor- 
tunity to men to provide decently for their families and 
homes is as effective work for the Master, whose first 
attribute was love, as patching up the unfortunate vic- 
tims of semi-starvation. The inculcation of the par- 
ticular intellectual conception which the donor may hold 
of religion, or as to how, after death, the soul can get into 
heaven, is, as the result of the Church teaching, still con- 
sidered far the most important line of effort. The em- 
phasis on hospitals is second, partly at least because, so 
it has seemed to me as a doctor of medicine, the more 
obvious personal benefit thereby conferred renders the 
recipients more impressionable to the views considered 
desirable to promulgate. Yet only to-day, as I came home 
from our busy operating-room, I felt how little real gain 
the additional time on earth often is either to the world 
outside or even to the poor sufferers themselves. In order 
to have one's early teachings on these matters profoundly 
shaken, one has only to work as a surgeon in a country 
where tuberculosis, beri-beri, and other preventable dis- 
eases, and especially the chronic malnutrition of poverty 
fills your clinic with suffering children, who at least 
are victims and not responsible spiritually for their 
"punishment." Of course, the magnitude of service to 
the world of every act of unselfishness, and much more 
of whole lives of devotion, such as that of Miss Sullivan, 
the teacher of Miss Helen Keller, can never be rightly 



THE MILL AND THE FOX FARM 235 

estimated by any purely material conception of human 
life. 

Love is dangerously near to sentimentality when we 
actually prefer remedial to prophylactic charity — and 
I personally feel that it is false economy even from the 
point of view of mission funds. The industrial mission, 
the educational mission, and the orphanage work at least 
rank with and should go hand in hand with hospitals in 
any true interpretation of a gospel of love. 

In subsequent years the nearest attempt to finance 
such commonly called "side issues of the work" has 
been with us through the medium of a discretionary fund. 
Into this are put sums of money specially given by per- 
sonal friends, who are content to leave the allocation of 
their expenditure in the hands of the worker on the actual 
field. This fund is, of course, paid out in the same way as 
other mission funds, and is as strictly supervised by the 
auditors. While it leaves possibly more responsibility 
than some of us are worthy of, it enables individuality 
to play that part in mission business which every one 
recognizes to be all-important in the ordinary business of 
the world. No money, however, from this fund has ever 
gone into the mill or in assisting the cooperative stores. 

Sorry as one feels to confess it, I have seen money 
wasted and lost through red tape in the mission business. 
And after all is not mission business part of the world's 
business, and must not the measure of success depend 
largely on the same factors in the one case as in the other .^^ 
Has one man more than another the right to be called 
"missionary," for of what use is any man in the world if 
he has no mission in it.f^ Christ's life is one long emphasis 
on the point that in the last analysis, when something 
has to be done, it is the individual who has to do it It is, 
we believe, a fact of paramount importance for efl5ciency 



236 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

and economy; and the loyalty of God in committing 
such trust to us, when He presumably knows exactly 
how unworthy we are of it, is the explanation of life's 
enigma. 

When at last our food and freight were purchased for 
the loggers for the winter and landed by the mail steamer 
nine miles from the mill, the whole bay was frozen and 
five miles of ice already over six inches thick. The hull of 
the Strathcona was three eighths of an inch soft steel; 
but there was no other way to transport the goods but 
on her, excepting by sledges — a very painful and im- 
practicable method. 

It was decided that as we could not possibly butt 
through the ice, we must butt over it. The whole com- 
pany of some thirty men helped us to move everything, 
including chains and anchors, to the after end of the ship, 
and to pile up the barrels of pork, flour, sugar, molasses, 
etc., together with boats and all heavy weights, so that 
her fore foot came above the water level and she looked 
as if she were sinking by the stem. We then proceeded 
to crash into the ice. Up onto it we ran, and then broke 
through, doing no damage whatever to her hull. The only 
trouble was that sometimes she would get caught fast in 
the trough, and it was exceedingly hard to back her 
astern. for a second drive. To coimteract this all hands 
stood on one rail, each carrying a weight, and then 
rushed over to the other side, backward and forward at 
the word of command, thus causing the steamer to roll. 
It was a very slow process, but we got there, though in 
true Biblical fashion, literally "reeling to and fro like 
drunken men." 

While the mill was in its cradle, we in the Strathcona 
were cruising the northern Labrador waters. We wit- 
nessed that year, off the mighty Kaumajets, the most 



THE MILL AND THE FOX FARM 237 

remarkable storm of lightning that I have ever seen in 
those parts. Liky masses hid the hoary heads of those 
tremendous cKffs. Away to the northwest, over the high 
land called Saeglek, a lurid Hght just marked the sharp 
outline of the mills. Ahead, where we were trying to 
make the entrance to Hebron Bay, an apparently im- 
penetrable wall persisted. Seaward night had already 
obscured the horizon; but the moon, hidden behind the 
curtain of the storm, now and again fitfully illuminated 
some icebergs lazily heaving on the ocean swell. Almost 
every second a vivid flash, now on one side, now on the 
other, would show us a glimpse of the land looming 
darkly ahead. The powers of darkness seemed at play; 
while the sea, the ice, the craggy cliffs, and the flashing 
heavens were advertising man's puny power. 

An amusing incident took place in one isolated har- 
bour. A patient came on board for medicine, and after 
examining him I went below to make it up. When I came 
on deck again I gave the medicine to one I took to be 
my man, and then sent him ashore to get the twenty- 
five cent fee for the Mission which he had forgotten. 
No sooner had he gone than another man came and 
asked if his medicine was ready. I had to explain to him 
that the man just climbing over the rail had it. The odd 
thing was that the latter, having paid for it, positively re- 
fused to give it up. True, he had not said that he was ill, 
but the medicine looked good (Heaven save the mark!) 
and he "guessed that it would suit his complaint all 
right." 

At the mill we found that quite a large part of the 
timberland was over limestone, while near our first dam 
there was some very white marble. We fully intended to 
erect a kiln, using our refuse for fuel, for the land is 
loaded with humic acid, and only plants like blueberries, 



238 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

conifers, and a very limited flora flourish on it. Some 
friends in England, however, hearing of marble in the 
bay, which it was later discovered formed an entire 
momitain, commenced a marble mine near the entrance. 
The material there is said to be excellent for statuary. 
Even this small discovery of natural resources encouraged 
us. For having neither road, telegraph, nor mail service 
to the mill, we hoped that the development of these 
things might help in our own enterprise. 

For ten years the little mill has run, giving work to the 
locality, better houses, a new church and school, and in- 
deed created a new village. 

The only trouble with this North country's own pe- 
culiar winter work, fur-hunting, is that its very nature 
limits its supply. In my early days in the country, fur 
in Labrador was very cheap. Seldom did even a silver 
fox fetch a hundred dollars. Beaver, lynx, wolverine, 
wolves, bears, and other skins were priced proportion- 
ately. Still, some men lived very well out of furring. We 
came to the conclusion that the only way to improve 
conditions in this line was to breed some of the animals 
in captivity. We did not then know of any enterprise of 
that kind, but I remembered in the zoological gardens 
at Washington seeing a healthy batch of young fox 
pups born in captivity. 

Life is short. Things have to be crowded into it. So 
we started that year an experimental fox farm at St. 
Anthony. A few uprights from the woods and some rolls 
of wire are a fox farm. We put it close by the hospital, 
thinking that it would be less trouble. The idea, we re- 
joice to know, was perfectly right; but we had neither 
time, study, nor experience to teach us how to manage 
the animals. Very soon we had a dozen couples, red, 
white, patch, and one silver pair. Some of the young fox 



THE MILL AND THE FOX FARM 239 

pups were very tame, for I find an old record written by 
a professor of Harvard University, while he was on board 
the Strathcona on one trip when we were bringing some 
of the little creatures to St. Anthony. He describes the 
state of affairs as follows: "Dr. Grenfell at one time had 
fifteen little foxes aboard which he was carrying to St. 
Anthony to start a fox farm there. Some of these Kttle 
animals had been brought aboard in blubber casks, and 
their coats were very sticky. After a few days they were 
very tame and played with the dogs; were all over the 
deck, fell down the companionway, were always having 
their tails and feet stepped on, and yelping for pain, 
when not yelling for food. The long-suffering seaman who 
took care of them said, ' I been cleaned out that fox box. 
It do be shockin'. I been in a courageous turmoil my 
time, but dis be the head smell ever I witnessed.' " 

When the farm was erected, every schooner entering 
the harbour was interested in it, and a deep-cut pathway 
soon developed as the crews went up to see the animals. 
The reds and one patch were very tame, and always 
came out to greet us. One of the reds loved nothing better 
than to be caught and hugged, and squealed with delight 
like a child when you took notice of it. The whites, and 
still more the silvers, were always very shy; and though 
we never reared a single pup, there were some born and 
destroyed by the old ones. 

As the years passed we decided to close up the little 
farm, particularly after a certain kind of sickness which 
resembled strychnine poisoning had attacked and de- 
stroyed three of the animals which were especial pets. 
We then converted the farm into a garden with a glass 
house for our seedling vegetables. 

Meanwhile the industry had been developed by a Mr. 
Beetz in Quebec Labrador with very marked economic 



240 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

success; and in Prince Edward Island with such tre- 
mendous profit that it soon became the most important 
industry in the Province. Enormous prices were paid for 
stock. I remembered a schooner in the days of our farm 
(1907) bringing me in four live young silvers, and asking 
two hundred dollars for the lot. We had enough animals 
and refused to buy them. In 1914 one of our distant 
neighbours, who had caught a live slut in pup, sold her 
with her little brood for ten thousand dollars. We at 
once started an agitation to encourage the industry 
locally, and the Government passed regulations that only 
foxes bred in the Colony could be exported alive. The 
last wild one sold was for twenty-five dollars to a buyer, 
and resold for something like a thousand dollars by him. 
A large number of farms grew up and met with more or 
less success, one big one especially in Labrador, which is 
still running. We saw there this present year some de- 
lightful little broods, also some mink and marten (sables), 
the prettiest little animals to watch possible. For some 
reason the success of this farm so far has not been what 
was hoped for it. Indeed, even in Prince Edward Island 
the furor has somewhat died down owing to the war; 
though at the close of the war it is anticipated that the 
industry will go on steadily and profitably. Are not sheep, 
angora goats, oxen, and other animals just the result of 
similar efforts? If fox-farming some day should actually 
supersede the use of the present sharp-toothed leg trap, 
no small gain would have been effected. A fox now 
trapped in those horrible teeth remains imprisoned gen- 
erally till he perishes of cold, exhaustion, or fear. Though 
the fur trapper as a rule is a most gentle creature, the 
" quahty of mercy is not strained" in furring. 



r 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE CHILDREN'S HOME 

"What's that schooner bound South at this time of 
year for?" I asked the skipper of a fishing vessel who 
had come aboard for treatment the second summer I 
was on the coast. 

"I guess, Doctor, that that's the Yankee what's been 
down North for a load of Huskeymaws. What do they 
want with them when they gets them?" 

"They'll put them in a cage and show them at ten 
cents a head. They're taking them to the World's Fair 
in Chicago." 

People of every sort crowded to see the popular Es- 
kimo Encampment on the Midway. The most taking 
attraction among the groups displayed was a little boy, 
son of a Northern Chieftain, Kaiachououk by name; 
and many a nickel was thrown into the ring that little 
Prince Pomiuk might show his dexterity with the thirty- 
foot lash of his dog whip. 

One man alone of all who came to stare at the little 
people from far-off Labrador took a real interest in the 
child. It was the Rev. C. C. Carpenter, who had spent 
many years of his life as a clergyman on the Labrador 
coast. But one day Mr. Carpenter missed his little 
friend. Pomiuk was found on a bed of sickness in his 
dark hut. An injury to his thigh had led to the onset 
of an insidious hip disease. 

The Exhibition closed soon after, and the Eskimos 
went north. But Pomiuk was not forgotten, and Mr. 
Carpenter sent him letter after letter^ though he never 



242 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

received an answer. The first year the band of Eskimos 
reached as far north as Ramah, but Pomiuk 's increasing 
sufferings made it impossible for them to take him far- 
ther that season. 

Meanwhile in June, 1895, we again steamed out 
through the Narrows of St. John's Harbour, deter- 
mined to push as far north as the farthest white family. 
A dark foggy night in August found us at the entrance 
of that marvellous gorge called Nakvak. We pushed our 
way cautiously in some twenty miles from the entrance. 
Suddenly the watch sang out, "Light on the starboard 
bow ! " and the sound of our steamer whistle echoed and 
reechoed in endless cadences between those mighty 
cliffs. Three rifle shots answered us, soon a boat bumped 
our side, and a hearty Englishman sprang over the 
rail. 

It was George Ford, factor of the Hudson Bay Com- 
pany at that post. During the evening's talk he told 
me of a group of Eskimos still farther up the fjord having 
with them a dying boy. Next day I had my first glimpse 
of little Prince Pomiuk. We found him naked and hag- 
gard, lying on the rocks beside the tiny "tubik." 

The Eskimos were only too glad to be rid of the re- 
sponsibility of the sick lad, and, furthermore, he was 
"no good fishing." So the next day saw us steaming 
south again, carrying with us the boy and his one treas- 
ured possession — a letter from a clergyman at Andover, 
Massachusetts. It contained a photograph, and when 
I showed it to Pomiuk he said, "Me even love him." 

A letter was sent to the address given, and some 
weeks later came back an answer. "Keep him," it said. 
"He must never know cold and loneliness again. I write 
for a certain magazine, and the children in 'The Corner' 
will become his guardians." Thus the "Corner Cot" was 



THE CHILDREN'S HOME 243 

founded, and occupied by the little Eskimo Prince for 
the brief remainder of his hfe. 

On my return the following summer the child's joyful 
laughter greeted me as he said, "Me Gabriel Pomiuk 
now." A good Moravian Brother had come along during 
the winter and christened the child by the name of the 
angel of comfort. 

In a sheltered corner of a little graveyard on the La- 
brador coast rests the tiny body of this true prince. 
When he died the doctor in charge of the hospital wrote 
me that the building seemed desolate without his smiling, 
happy face and unselfish presence. The night that he 
was buried the mysterious aurora lit up the vault of 
heaven. The Innuits, children of the Northland, call 
it "the spirits of the dead at play." But it seemed to us 
a shining symbol of the joy in the City of the King that 
another young soldier had won his way home. 

The Roman Catholic Church is r.ndoubtedly correct 
in stating that the first seven years of his life makes the 
child. Missions have always emphasized the importance 
of the children from a purely propaganda point of view. 
But our Children's Home was not begun for any such 
reason. Like Topsy, "it just grow'd." I had been sum- 
moned to a lonely headland, fifty miles from our hos- 
pital at Indian Harbour, to see a very sick family. 
Among the spruce trees in a small hut Kved a Scotch 
salmon fisher, his wife and five little children. When we 
anchored off the promontory we were surprised to re- 
ceive no signs of welcome. When we landed and entered 
the house we found the mother dead on the bed and 
the father lying on the floor dying. Next morning we 
improvised two coffins, contributed from the wardrobes 
of all hands enough black material for a " seemly " funeral, 



244 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

and later, steaming up the bay to a sandy stretch of 
land, buried the two parents with all the ceremonies 
of the Church — and found ourselves left with five little 
mortals in black sitting on the grave mound. We thought 
that we had done all that could be expected of a doctor, 
but we now found the difference. It looked as if God ex- 
pected more. An uncle volunteered to assume one little 
boy and we sailed away with the remainder of the chil- 
dren. Having no place to keep them, we wrote to a friendly 
newspaper in New England and advertised for foster 
parents. One person responded. A young farmer's wife 
wrote: "I am just married to a farmer in the country, 
and miss the chance to teach children in Sunday-School, 
or even to get to church, it is so far away. I think that I 
can feed two children for the Lord's sake. If you will 
send them along, I will see that they do not want for 
anything." We shipped two, and began what developed 
into our Children's Home with the balance of the stock. 

We had everything to learn in the rearing of children, 
having had, only the hygienic side of their development 
to attend to previously. One of the two which we kept 
turned out very well, becoming a fully trained nurse. 
The other failed. Both of those who went to New Eng- 
land did well, the superior discipline of their foster 
mother being no doubt responsible. The following fall I 
made a special journey to see the latter. It was a small 
farm on which they lived, and a little baby had just ar- 
rived. Only high ideals could have persuaded the woman 
to accept the added responsibility. The children were 
as bright and jolly as possible. 

Among the other functions which have fallen to my 
lot to perform is the ungrateful task of unpaid magis- 
trate, or justice of the peace. In this capacity a little 
later I was called on to try a mother, who in a Labrador 



THE CHILDREN'S HOME 245 

village had become a widow and later married a man 
with six children who refused to accept her three-year- 
old little girl. When I happened along, the baby was 
living alone in the mother's old shack, a mud- walled 
hut, and she or the neighbours went in and tended it 
as they could. None of the few neighbours wanted per- 
manently to assume the added expense of the child, so 
dared not accept it temporarily. It was sitting happily 
on the floor playing with a broken saucer when I came 
in. It showed no fear of a stranger; indeed, it made most 
friendly overtures. I had no right to send the new hus- 
band to jail. I could not fine him, for he had no money. 
There was no jail in Labrador, anyhow. My special con- 
stable was a very stout fisherman, a family man, who 
proposed to nurse the child till I could get it to some 
place where it could be properly looked after. When we 
steamed away, we had the baby lashed into a swing cot. 
It became very rough, and the baby, of course, crawled 
out and was foimd in the scuppers. It did everything 
that it ought not to do, but which we knew that it would. 
But we got it to the hospital at last and the nurse re- 
ceived it right to her heart. 

In various ways my family grew at an alarming rate, 
once the general principle was established. On my early 
summer voyage to the east coast of Labrador I found 
at Indian Harbour Hospital a little girl of four. In the 
absence of her father, who was hunting, and while her 
mother lay sick in bed, she had crawled out of the 
house and when found in the snow had both legs badly 
frozen. They became gangrenous halfway to the knee, 
and her father had been obliged to chop them both off. 
An operation gave her good stumps; but what use was 
she in Labrador with no legs? So she joined our family, 
and we gave her such good new limbs that when I brought 



246 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

her into Government House at Halifax, where one of our 
nurses had taken her to school temporarily, and she 
ran into the room with two other little girls, the Gov- 
ernor could scarcely tell which was our Httle cripple 
Kirkina. 

The following fall as we left for the South our good 
friend, the chief factor of the Hudson Bay Company, 
told me that on an island in the large inlet known to us 
as Eskimo Bay a native family, both hungry and naked, 
were living literally under the open sky. We promised 
to try and find them and help them with some warm 
clothing. 

Having steamed round the island and seen no signs 
of life, we were on the point of leaving when a tiny smoke 
column betrayed the presence of human hf e — and with 
my family-man mate we landed as a search party. 
Against the face of a sheer rock a single sheet of light cot- 
ton duck covered the abode of a woman with a nursing 
baby. They were the only persons at home. The three 
boys and a father comprised the remainder of the family. 
We soon found the two small boys. They were practically 
stark naked, but fat as curlews, being full of wild berries 
with which their bodies were stained bright blues and 
reds. They were a jolly little couple, as unconcerned about 
their environment as Robinson Crusoe after five years 
on his island. Soon the father came home. I can see him 
still — the vacant brown face of a very feeble-minded 
half-breed, ragged and tattered and almost bootless. 
He was carrying an aged single-barrelled boy's gun in 
one hand and a belated sea-gull in the other, which bird 
was destined for the entire evening meal of the family. 
A half-wild-looking hobbledehoy boy of fifteen years 
also joined the group. 

It was just beginning to snow, a wet sleet. Eight 



THE CHILDKEN'S HOME 247 

months of winter lay ahead. Yet not one of the family- 
seemed to think a whit about that which was vivid 
enough to the minds of the mate and myself. We sat 
down for a regular pow-wow beside the fire sputtering 
in the open room, from which thick smoke crept up the 
face of the rock, and hung over us in a material but sym- 
bolic cloud. It was naturally cold. The man began with 
a plea for some "clodin." We began with a plea for some 
children. How many would he swap for a start in clothing 
and "tings for his winter".? He picked out and gave us 
Jimmie. The soft-hearted mate, on whose cheeks the 
tears were literally standing, grabbed Jimmie — as the 
latter did his share of the gull. But we were not satisfied. 
We had to have Willie. It was only when a breaking of 
diplomatic relations altogether was threatened that 
Willie was sacrificed on the altar of "tings." I forget the 
price, but I think that we threw in an axe, which was 
one of the trifles which the father lacked — and in this 
of all countries ! The word was no sooner spoken than our 
shellback again excelled himself. He pounced on Willie 
like a hawk on its prey, and before the treaty was really 
concluded he was off to our dory with a naked boy kick- 
ing violently in the vice of each of his powerful arms. 
The grasping strength of our men, reared from child- 
hood to haul heavy strains and ponderous anchors, is 
phenomenal. 

Whatever sins Labrador has been guilty of, Malthu- 
sianism is not in the category. Nowhere are there larger 
families. Those of Quebec Labrador, which is better 
known, are of almost world-wide fame. God is, to Labra- 
dor thinking, the Giver of all children. Man's responsi- 
bility is merely to do the best he can to find food and 
clothing for them. A man can accomplish only so much. 
If these "gifts of God" suffer and are a burden to others 



248 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

that is kismet. It is the animal philosophy and makes 
women's lives on this coast terribly hard. The oppor- 
tunity for service along child-welfare lines is therefore 
not surprising from this angle also. 

One day, passing a group of islands, we anchored in 
a bight known as Rogues' Roost. It so happened that 
a man who many years before had shot off his right arm, 
and had followed up his incapacity with a large family 
of dependants, had just died. Life cannot be expected 
to last long in Labrador under those conditions. There 
were four children, one being a big boy who could help 
out. The rest were offered as a contribution to the 
Mission. A splendid Newfoundland fisherman and his 
wife had a summer fishing station here, and with that 
generous open-heartedness which is characteristic of 
our seafarers, they were only too anxious to help. "Of 
course, she would make clothing while I was North" — 
out of such odd garments as a general collection pro- 
duced. "She would n't think of letting them wear it till 
I came along South, not she." She would "put them in 
the tub as soon as she heard our whistle." When after 
the long summer's work we landed and went up to her 
little house, three shining, red, naked children were 
drying before a large stove, in which the last vestige of 
connection with their past was contributing its quota 
of calories toward the send-off. A few minutes later we 
were off to the ship with as sweet a batch of jolly, 
black-haired, dark-eyed kiddies as one could wish for. 
Our good friend could not keep back the tears as she 
kissed them good-bye on deck. The boy has already put 
in three years on the Western Front. The girls have both 
been educated, the elder having had two years finishing 
at the Pratt Institute in New York. 

A grimy note saying, "Please call in to Bird Island as 



THE CHILDREN'S HOME 249 

you pass and see the sick," brought me our next dona- 
tion. "There be something wrong with Mrs. B's twins, 
Doctor," greeted me on landing. "Seems as if they was 
like kittens, and could n't see yet a wink." It was only 
too true. The little twin girls were born blind in both 
eyes. What could they do in Labrador .^^ Two more for 
our family without any question. After leaving our Or- 
phanage, these two went through the beautiful school 
for the blind at Halifax, and are now able to make their 
own living in the world. 

So the roll swelled. Some came because they were or- 
phans; some because they were not. Thus, poor Sammy. 
The home from which he came was past description. 
From the outside it looked like a tumble-down shed. 
Inside there appeared to be but one room, "which meas- 
ured six by twelve feet, and a small lean-to. The family 
consisted of father and mother and three children. The 
eldest boy was about twelve, then came Sam, and lastly 
a wee girl of five, with pretty curly fair hair, but very 
thin and delicate-looking. She seemed to be half-starved 
and thoroughly neglected. The father was a ne'er-do- 
well and the mother an imbecile who has since died of 
tuberculosis. The filth inside was awful. The house was 
built of logs, and the spaces in between them were partly 
filled in with old rags and moss. The roof leaked. The 
room seemed to be alive with vermin, as were also the 
whole family. The two boys were simply clothed in a pair 
of men's trousers apiece and a dilapidated pair of boots 
between them. The trousers they found very hard to 
keep on and had to give them frequent hoists up. They 
were both practically destitute of underclothing. To hide 
all deficiencies, they each wore a woman's long jacket 
of the oldest style possible and green with age, which 
reached down to their heels. Round their waists they 



250 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

each wore a skin strap. They were stripped of their rags, 
and made to scrub themselves in the stream and then 
indoors before putting on their new clean clothes. Sammy 
and the little sister joined the family. 

One of our boys is from Cape Chidley itself; others 
come from as far south and west as Bay of Islands in 
South Newfoundland. So many erroneous opinions 
seem to persist regarding the difference between New- 
foundland and Labrador that I am constantly asked: 
"But why do you have a Children's Home in New- 
foundland? Can't the Newfoundlanders look out for 
themselves and their dependent children.'*" As I have 
tried to make clear in a previous chapter North and 
South Newfoundland should be sharply differentiated 
as to wealth, education, climate, and opportunity. 
Though for purposes of efficiency and economy the ac- 
tual building of the Home is situated in the north end 
of the northern peninsula of Newfoundland, the chil- 
dren who make up the family are drawn almost entirely 
from the Labrador side of the Straits; unless, as is often 
the case, the poverty and destitution of a so-called New- 
foundland family on the south side of Belle Isle makes it 
impossible to leave children under such conditions. 

It is obvious that something had to be built to accom- 
modate the galaxy; and some one secured who under- 
stood the problem of running the Home. She — how 
often it is "she" — was found in England, a volunteer 
by the name of Miss Eleanor Storr. She was a true 
Christian lady and a trained worker as well. The build- 
ing during the years grew with the family, so that it is 
really a wonder of odds and patches. The generosity of 
one of our volunteers, Mr. Francis Sayre, the son-in-law 
of President Wilson, doubled its capacity. But buildings 
that are made of green wood, and grow like Topsy, are 




INSIDE THE ORPHANAGE 



THE CHILDREN'S HOME 251 

apt to end like Topsy — turvy. Now we are straining 
every nerve to obtain a suitable accommodation for the 
children. We sorely need a brick building, economically 
laid out and easily kept warm, with separate wings for 
girls and boys and a creche for babies. Miss Storr was 
obliged to leave us, and now for over six years a splendid 
and unselfish English lady. Miss Katie Spalding, has 
been helping to solve this most important of all prob- 
lems — the preparation of the next generation to make 
their land and the world a more fit place in which to live. 
Miss Spalding's contribution to this coimtry has lain 
not only in her influence on the children and her un- 
ceasing care of them, but she has given her counsel and 
assistance in other problems of the Mission, where also 
her judgment, experience, and wisdom have proven in- 
valuable. 

There is yet another side of the orphanage problem. 
We have been obliged, due to the lack of any boarding- 
school, to accept bright children from isolated homes 
so as to give them a chance in life. It has been the truest 
of love messages to several. The children always repay, 
whether the parents pay anything or not; and as so 
much of the care of them is volunteer, and friends have 
assumed the expenses of a number of the children, the 
budget has never been unduly heavy. They do all their 
own work, and thanks to the inestimably valuable help 
of the Needlework Guild of America through its Labra- 
dor branch, the clothing item has been made possible. 
In summer we use neither boots nor stockings for the 
children xmless absolutely necessary. Our harbour people 
still look on that practice askance; but ours are the 
healthiest lot of children on the coast, and their brown 
bare legs and tough, well-shaped feet are a great asset 
to their resistance to tuberculosis, their arch-enemy, and 



252 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

no small addition to the attraction of their merry faces 
and hatless heads. 

Even though Gabriel, Prince Pomiuk, never lived 
within its walls, the real beginning of the idea of our 
Children's Home was due to him; and one feels sure 
that his spirit loves to visit the other little ones who 
claim this lonely coast as their homeland also. ' 

The one test for surgery which we allow in these days 
is its "end results." Patients must not be advertised 
as cured till they have survived the treatment many 
years. Surely that is man's as well as God's test. Cer- 
tainly it is the gauge of the outlay in child life. What is 
the good of it all.'^ Does it pay? In the gift of increasing 
joy to us, in its obvious humanity and in its continuous 
inspiration, it certainly does make the work of life here 
in every branch the better. 

The solution of the problem of inducing the peace of 
God and the Kingdom of God into our "parish." is most 
likely to be solved by wise and persevering work among 
the children. For in them lies the hope of the future of 
this country, and their true education and upbringing to 
fit them for wise citizenship have been cruelly neglected 
in this "outpost of Empire." 

Another menace to the future welfare of the coast has 
been the lack of careful instruction and suitable oppor- 
tunities for the development, physical, mental, and spir- 
itual, of its girls. Without an educated and enlightened 
womanhood, no country, no matter how favored by ma- 
terial prosperity, can hope to take its place as a factor in 
the progress of the world. In our orphanage and educa- 
tional work we have tried to keep these two ideas con- 
stantly before us, and to offer incentives to and oppor- 
tunities for useful life-work in whatever branch, from 
the humblest to the highest, a child showed aptitude. 



THE CHILDREN'S HOME 253 

Through the vision, ability, and devotion of Miss 
Storr, Miss Spalding, and their helpers, in training the 
characters as well as the bodies of the children at the 
Home, and by the generous support of friends of children 
elsewhere, we have been able to turn out each year from 
its walls young men and women better fitted to cope 
with the difficult problems of this environment, and to 
offer to its service that best of all gifts — useful and con- 
secrated personalities. 



CHAPTER XV 

PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION 

Every child should be washed. Every child should 
be educated. The only question is how to get there. The 
"why's" of life interest chiefly the academic mind. The 
"how's" interest every one. It is a pleasure sometimes 
to be out in dirty weather on a lee shore; it permits you 
to devote all your energies to accomplishing something. 
When secretary for our hospital rowing club on the 
Thames, a fine cup was given for competition by Sir 
Frederick Treves on terms symbolic of his attitude to 
life. The race was to be in ordinary punts with a cox- 
swain "in order that every ounce of energy should be 
devoted to the progress of the boat." 

That is the whole trouble with the Newfoundland 
Labrador. All moneys granted for education are handed 
to the churches for sectarian schools. It is almost writing 
ourselves down as still living in the Middle Ages, when 
the Clergy had a monopoly of polite learning. In more 
densely populated countries this division of grants need 
not be so disastrous. Here it means that one often finds 
a Roman Catholic, a Church of England, a Methodist, 
and a Salvation Army school, all in one little village — 
and no school whatever in the adjoining place. 

The denominational spirit, fostered by these sec- 
tarian schools and societies, is so emphasized that 
Catholic and Protestant have little in common. Some 
preferred to let their children or themselves suffer pain 
and inefficiency, rather than come for relief to a hospital 
where the doctors were Protestant. This has in some 
measure passed away, but it was painfully real at first — 



PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION ^55 

so much so that once a rickety, crippled child, easily 
cured, though he actually came to the harbour, was for- 
bidden to land and returned home to be a cripple for life. ' 

The salaries available offer no attraction to enter the 
teaching profession in this island; and there is no com- 
pulsory education law to assist those who with lofty 
motives remain loyal to the profession when "better 
chances" come along. Gauged rightly, there is no such 
thing a^ better chance for fulfilling life's purposes than 
an education; and modern conditions concede the right 
of a decent living wage to all who render service to the 
world in whatever line. 

In the little village where are our headquarters there 
was already a Church of England and a Methodist school 
when we came there, and a Salvation Army one has 
since been added. Threats of still another "institution 
of learning " menaced us at one time — almost like a 
new Egyptian plague, with more permanency of results 
thrown in. 

If the motor power of the school boat is dissipated in 
sectarian religious education, not to say focussed on it, 
the arrival of the cargo must be seriously handicapped. 
The statistical returns may show a majority of our fisher- 
men as "able to read and write"; but as a matter of fact 
the ilHteracy and ignorance of North Newfoundland and 
Labrador is the greatest handicap in the lives of the 
people. 

My first scholar came from North Labrador, long 
before we aspired to a school of our own. He was a lad 
of Scotch extraction and name, and came aboard the hos- 
pital ship one night, as she lay at anchor among some 
northern islands, with the request that we would take 
him up with us to some place where he could get an hour 's 
schooling a day. He offered to work all the rest of the time 



256 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

in return for his food and clotliing. To-day he holds a 
Pratt certificate, is head of our machine shop, has a sheet- 
metal working factory of his own which fills a most 
valuable purpose on the shore, is general consultant for 
the coast in matters of engineering, as well as being the 
Government surveyor for his district. He is also chief 
musician for the church, having fitted himself for both 
those latter posts in his "spare time." The inspiration 
which his life has been is in itself an education to many 
of us — a reflex result which is the really highest value 
of all life. 

As each transferred individual has come back North 
for service, desire has at once manifested itself for simi- 
lar privileges in young people who had not previously 
shown even interest enough to attend our winter night 
schools. This is the best evidence that inroads are being 
made into that natural apathy which is content with 
mediocrity or even inferiority. This is everywhere the 
world's most subtle enemy. Even if selfishness or envy 
has been the motive, the fact remains that they have 
often kindled that discontent with the past which Charles 
Kingsley preached as necessary to all progress. Nowhere 
could the pathology of the matter be more easily traced 
than in these concrete examples carrying the infection 
which could come from no other quarter into our isola- 
tion. It has been in very humble life an example of the 
return of the "Yankee to the Court of King Arthur." 

There was a time when Lord Haldane proposed that 
every English child, who in the Board schools had proved 
his ability to profit by it, should be given a college or 
university education at the expense of the State — as 
a remunerative outlay for the nation. This proposal 
was turned down as being too costly, though the expend- 
iture for a single day's runnng of this war would have 



PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION 257 

gone a long way to provide such a fund. We now know 
that it can be done and must be done as a sign manual 
of real freedom, wliich is not the leaving of parents or 
forbears, incompetent for any reason, free to damn their 
country with a stream of stunted intellects. 

America has already honoured herself forever by 
being a pioneer in this movement for the higher educa- 
tion of the people. Religion surely need not fear mental 
enhghtenment. The dangers of life lie in ignorance, and 
after all is not true religion a thing of the intellect as 
well as of the heart.'' Can that really be inculcated in 
" two periods of forty minutes each week devoted to sec- 
tarian teaching," which was one of the concessions de- 
manded of us in our fight for a free public or common 
school at St. Anthony? My own mental picture of myself 
at the age of seven sitting on a bench for forty minutes 
twice every week learning to be "religious" made me 
sympathize with Scrooge when the Ghost of the Past 
was paying him a visit. \ 

One thing was certain. The young lives entrusted to 
us were having as good medical care for their bodies 
as we could provide; and if we could compass it, we 
were going to have that paralleled for their minds. The 
parents of the viUage children could do as they liked 
with those committed to them — and they did it. There 
is nothing so thoroughly reactionary that I know of as 
religious prejudice well ground in. As regards the treat- 
ment of physical ailments the prejudices of what Dr. 
Holmes called "Homoeopathy and Kindred Delusions" 
always are strong in proportion as they are impreg- 
nated with some religious bias. 

Our efforts to combine the local schools having failed, 
we had to provide a building of our own. This we felt 
must be planned for the future. For some day the halcyon 



258 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

days of peace on earth shall be permitted in our com- 
munity, and the true loyalty of efficient service to our 
brothers will, it is to be hoped, become actually the 
paramount object of our Christian religion. Perhaps 
this terrible war will have convinced the world that the 
loftiest aspirations of mankind are no more to save your- 
self hereafter than here. Is it not as true as ever that if 
we are not ourselves possessors of Christ's spirit, our- 
selves we cannot save.? 

The only schoolhouse available, anyhow, was not 
nearly so good a building as that which we have since 
provided for the accommodation of our pigs! Fat pork 
is considered an absolute essential "down North"; and 
it was cheaper and safer, according to Upton Sinclair, 
to raise pigs than buy the salted or tinned article. So 
we had instituted what we deemed a missionary enter- 
prise in that line. {Pace our vegetarian friends.) 

As soon as a sum of three thousand dollars. had been 
raised, architect friends at the Pratt Institute sent down 
to us competitive designs, and one of our Labrador boys, 
who had studied there, erected the building. Having 
at the beginning no funds whatever for current expenses, 
we had to look for volunteer teachers. One denomina- 
tion helped with part of its harbour grant, but the Gov- 
ernment would not make any special donation toward 
the union school project. Even the caput grant, to which 
we had hoped that we were entitled for our own or- 
phanage children, had by law to go to the denomination 
to which their parents had belonged. This was not al- 
ways easy to decide correctly. On the occasion of taking 
the last census in Labrador, a well-dressed stranger sud- 
denly visited one of our settlements on the east coast. 
It so happened that a very poor man with a large and 
growing family of eight children under ten years, who 



PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION 259 

resided there, was not so loyal to his church as we are 
taught we ought to be. When the stranger entered his 
tilt a vision of material favours to be obtained was the 
dominant idea in the fisherman's mind. He was there- 
fore on tenterhooks all the while that the questioning 
was going on lest some blunder of his might alienate the 
sympathy on which he was banking for "getting his 
share." At length it came to the momentous point of 
"What denomination do you belong to.^* " — a very vital 
matter when it comes to sympathy and sharing up. In 
some hesitation he gazed at the row of his eight un- 
washed and but half -clad offspring, whose treacly faces 
gaped open-mouthed at the visitor. Then with sudden 
inspiration he decided to play for safety, and replied, 
"Half of them is Church of England, and half is Metho- 
dist!" 

Being an unrecognized school, and so far off, some 
years went by before the innovation of bringing up 
scholars from our northern district entered our heads. 
We realized at length, however, that we should close 
one channel of criticism to the enemy if we proved that 
we could justify our school by their standard of annual 
examinations. Our teachers, being mostly volunteers, 
had to come from outside the Colony. Having no funds 
to purchase books and other supplies, we made use of 
books also sent us from outside. The real value of the 
local examination becomes questionable as a standard 
of success when far more highly educated teachers, and 
at least as cleverly laid-out study books, prevented the 
children in our school from passing them. 

Moreover, further to waken their faculties, we had 
included in our facilities a large upper hall of the school 
building and a library of some thousands of books col- 
lected from all quarters. The former afforded the stimu- 



260 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

lus which entertainments given by the children could 
carry, and also space for physical drill; the latter, that 
greatest incentive of all, access to books which lure peo- 
ple to wish to read them. In summer the parents and 
older children are busy with the fisheries day and night, 
and the little children run more or less wild, so this form 
of occupation was doubly desirable. 

The generous help of summer volunteers, especially 
a trained kindergartner. Miss Olive Lesley, gave us a 
regular summer school. All the expensive outfit needed 
was also donated. Eye and hand were enlisted in the 
service of brain evolution; while a piano, which it is 
true had seen better days, pressed the ear and the im- 
agination into the service as well. 

One of the great gaps in child development in Labrador 
had been the almost entire lack of games. The very first 
year of our coming the absence of dolls had so impressed 
itself upon us that the second season we had brought out 
a trunkful. Even then we found later that the dolls were 
perched high up on the walls as ornaments, just out of 
reach of the children. In one little house I found a lad 
playing with some marbles. For lack of better these were 
three-quarter-inch bullets which "Dad had given him," 
while the alley was a full-inch round ball, which belonged 
to what my host was pleased to call "the little darlint " — 
a hoary blunderbuss over six feet in length. The skipper 
informed me that he had plenty of "fresh " for the winter, 
largely as a result of the successful efforts of the " darlint " ; 
though it appeared to have exploded with the same fatal 
effect this year as the season previous. "I hear that you 
made a good shot the other day. Uncle Joe," I remarked. 
"Nothing to speak on," he answered. "I only got forty- 
three, though I think there was a few more if I could have 
found them on the ice." 



PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION 261 

The pathos of the lack of toys and games appealed 
especially to the Anglo-Saxon, who believes that if he 
has any advantage over competitors, it is not merely in 
racial attributes, but in the reaction of those attributes 
which develop in him the ineradicable love of athletics 
and sport. The fact that he dubs the classmate whom he 
admires most *'a good sport," shows that he thinks so, 
anyway. 

So organized play was carefully introduced on the 
coast. It caught like wildfire among the children, and it 
was deHghtful to see groups of them naively memorizing 
by the roadside school lessons in the form of "Ring-of- 
Roses," "Looby-Loo," "All on the Train for Boston." 
To our dismay in the minds of the local people the very 
success of this effort gave further evidence of our in- 
competence. 

Our people have well-defined, though often singular, 
ideas as to what Almighty God does and does not allow; 
and among the pursuits which are irrevocably con- 
demned by local oracles is dancing. The laxity of "for- 
eigners" on this article of the Creed is proverbial. At the 
time there were two ministers in the place, and realizing 
that the people considered that our kindergarten was 
introducing the thin edge of the wedge, and that our 
whole effort might meet with disaster unless the rumours 
were checked, I went in search of them without delay. 
Three o'clock found us knocking at the kindergarten 
door. The teacher and source of the reputed scandal 
seemed in no way disconcerted by the visitation. The 
first game was irreproachable — every child was sitting 
on the floor. But next the children were choosing partners, 
and though the boys had chosen boys, and the girls 
girls, the suspicions of the vigilance committee were 
aroused. No danger, however, to the three R's trans- 



262 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

pired, and we were next successfully piloted clear of 
condemnation through a game entitled " Piggie-wig and 
Piggie-wee." Our circulation was just beginning to oper- 
ate once more in its normal fashion when we were told 
that the whole company would now "join hands and 
move around in a circle" to music. The entire jury 
sensed that the crucial moment had come. We saw boys 
and girls alternating, hand held in hand — and all to the 
undeniably secular libretto of "Looby-Loo." It was, 
moreover, noted with inward pain that many of the 
little feet actually left the ground. We adjourned to an 
adjacent fish stage to discuss the matter. I need not 
dilate on the vicissitudes of the session. It was clear 
that all but "Looby-Loo" could obviously be excluded 
from the group of " questionables " — but the last game 
was of a different calibre and must be put to vote. 
My readers will be relieved to learn that the resultant 
ballot was unanimously in favour of non-interference, 
and that from the pulpit the following Sunday the 
clergy gave to the kindergarten the official sanction of 
the Church. 

Other outsiders now began telling the people that 
we could not pass the Colony's examinations because we 
wasted our efforts on teaching "foolishness"; and the 
denomination which had hitherto lent us aid withdrew 
it, and tried again to run a midget sectarian school right 
alongside. The first occasion, however, on which this 
institution came seriously to my attention was when the 
minister and another young man came to call during the 
early weeks of our winter school session. The stranger 
was their special teacher. He was undoubtedly a smart 
lad; he had passed the preliminary examination. But he 
was only sixteen, and in temperament a very young six- 
teen at that. He was engaged at a more generous salary 



PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION 263 

tlian usual, and was perfectly prepared to revolutionize 
our records. But, alas, not only was their little building 
practically unfit for habitation, but after a week's wait- 
ing not one single scholar had come to his school. The 
contrast between the two opportunities was too great — 
except for frothing criticism. Gladly, to help our neigh- 
bours out of a difficulty, we divided a big classroom into 
two parts, added a third teacher to our school, and were 
thus able to make an intermediate grade. 

The great majority of the whole reconstruction and 
work of the school was made possible by the generous 
and loving interest of a lady in Chicago. Added to the 
other anxieties of meeting our annual budget, we did 
not feel able to bear the additional burden for which 
this venture called. One cannot work at one's best at 
any time with an anxious mind. The lady, however, was 
generous enough to give sufficient endowment to secure 
two teachers among other things, though she absolutely 
refused to let even her name be known in connection 
with the school. Our consolation is that we know that 
she has vision enough to realize the value of her gift and 
to accept that as a more than sufficient return. 

Seeing that some of our older scholars were able to 
find really useful and remunerative employment in 
teaching, and as only for those who held certificates of 
having passed the local examinations were augmentation 
grants available, we decided to make special efforts to 
have our scholars pass by the local standards. We, there- 
fore, thanks to the endowment, engaged teachers trained 
in the country, and instituted the curriculum of the 
Colony. These teachers told us that our school was better 
than almost any outside St. John's. Four scholars have 
passed this year; and now we have as head mistress a 
dehghtful lady who holdHhe best percentage record for 



264 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

passing children through the requirements of the local 
examinations of any in the country. 

So much more deeply, however, do idle words sink 
into some natures than even deeds, that one family pre- 
ferred to keep their children at home to risk sending 
them to our undenominational school; and there is no 
law to compel better wisdom with us here in the North. 

On the other hand, we had already obtained a scale of 
our own for grading success. For a number of our most 
promising boys and girls we had raised the money for 
them to get outside the country what they could never 
get in it, namely, the technical training which is so much 
needed on a coast where we have to do everything for 
ourselves, and the breadth of view which contact with a 
more progressive civilization alone can give them. The 
faculty of Pratt Institute gave us a scholarship, and later 
two of them; and with no little fear as to their ability to 
keep up, we sent two young men there. The newness of 
our school forced us to select at the beginning boys who 
had only received teaching after their working hours. 
Both boys and girls have always had to earn something 
to help them on their way through. But they have stood 
the test of efficiency so well that we look forward with 
confidence to the future. A girl who took the Domestic 
Economy course at the Nasson Institute told me only 
to-day, "It gave me a new life altogether, Doctor"; and 
she is making a splendid return in service to her own 
people here. 

The real test of education is its communal effect; and 
no education is complete which leaves the individual 
ignorant of the things that concern his larger relation- 
ship to his country, any more than he is anything beyond 
a learned animal if he knows nothing of his opportunities 
and responsibilities as a son of God. But though example 



PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION 265 

is a more impelling factor than precept, undoubtedly the 
most permanent contributions conferred on the coast by 
the many college students, who come as volunteers every 
summer to help us in the various branches of our 
work, is just this gift of their own personalities. Strangely 
enough, quite a number of these helpers who have to 
spend considerable money coming and returning, just to 
give us what they can for the sole return of what that 
means to their own Kves, have not been the sons of the 
wealthy, but those working their way through the col- 
leges. These men are just splendid to hold up as inspira- 
tional to our own. 

The access to books, as well as to sermons, may not 
be neglected. Our faculties, like our jaws, atrophy if we 
do not use them to bite with. The Carnegie Kbraries 
have emphasized a fact that is to education and the 
colleges what social work is to medicine and the hos- 
pitals. We were running south some years ago on our 
long northern trip before a fine leading wind, when sud- 
denly we noticed a small boat with an improvised flag 
hoisted, standing right out across our bows. Thinking 
that it was at least some serious surgical case, we at once 
ordered "Down sail and heave her to," annoying though 
it was to have the trouble and delay. When at last she 
was alongside, a solitary, white-haired old man chmbed 
with much difficulty over our rail. "Good-day. What's 
the trouble? We are in a hurry." The old man most 
courteously doffed his cap, and stood holding it in his 
hand. "I wanted to ask you, Doctor," he said slowly, "if 
you had any books which you could lend me. We can't 
get anything to read here." An angry reply almost es- 
caped my lips for delaying a steamer for such a pur- 
pose. But a strange feeling of humiliation replaced it 
almost immediately. Which is really charity — skilfully 



me A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

to remove his injured leg, if he had one, or to afford him 
the pleasure and profit of a good book? Both services 
were just as far from his reach without our help. 

"Haven't you got any books?" 

"Yes, Doctor, I've got two, but I've read them 
through and through long ago." 

"What kind are they?" 

"One is the 'Works of Josephus,'" he answered, "and 
the other is 'Plutarch's Lives.'" 

I thought that I had discovered the first man who 
could honestly and truthfully say that he would prefer 
for his own library the "best hundred books," selected 
by Mr. Ruskin and Dr. Eliot, without even so much as 
a sigh for the "ten best sellers." 

He was soon bounding away over the seas in his little 
craft, the happy possessor of one of our moving libra- 
ries, containing some fifty books, ranging from Henty's 
stories to discarded tomes from theological librg,ries. 

Each year the hospital ship moves these library 
boxes one more stage along the coast. As there are some 
seventy-five of them, they thus last the natural hfe of 
books, since we have only rarely enjoyed the help of a 
trained librarian enabling us to make the most use of 
these always welcome assets for our work. Later, some 
librarian friends from Brooklyn, chief among whom was 
Miss Marion Cutter, came down to help us; but our in- 
ability to have continuity when the ladies cannot afford 
to give their valuable services, has seriously handicapped 
the efficiency of this branch of the work. This, however, 
only spells opportunity, and when this war releases the 
new appreciation of service, we feel confident that some- 
how we shall be able to fill the gap, and some one will be 
found to come and help us again to meet this great need. 

The cooperation of teachers and librarians more than 



PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION 267 

doubles the capacity of each alone, and we believe sin- 
cerely that they do that of doctors, as they unquestion- 
ably do that of the clergy. All the world's workers have 
infinitely more to gain by cooperation than they often 
suspect. And indeed we who are apostles of cooperation, 
as essential for economy in distribution and efficiency 
in production, realize that groups of workers pulling 
together always increase by geometrical progression the 
result obtained. 

None of our methods, however, tackled the smallest 
settlements, hidden away here and there in these fjords, 
especially those unreached by the mail steamers -^d 
devoid of means of transportation. Mahomet just could 
not come to the mountain, so it had to go to him. A lady 
and a Doctor of Philosophy, Miss Ethel Gordon Muir, 
whose life had been spent in teaching, and who would 
have been excused for discontinuing that function dur- 
ing her long vacations, came down at her own cost and 
charges to carry the light to one of these lonely settle- 
ments. She has with loyal devotion continued to carry 
on and enlarge that work ever since, till finally she has 
built up a work that the clergyman of the main section 
of coast affected, and also the Superintendent of Edu- 
cation, have declared is the most effective branch of our 
Mission. Her band of teachers are volunteers. They 
come down to these little hamlets for the duration of 
their summer vacations. They live with the fishermen 
in their cottages and gather their pupils daily wherever 
seems best. Lack of proper accommodation and pioneer 
conditions throughout in no way deter them. We ex- 
pected that their criticism would be, "It is not worth 
while." That has never been the case. Before the war 
they came again and again, as a testimony to their belief 
in the value of the effort. Some have given promising 



268 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

children a chance for a complete education in the States. 
Indeed, one such lad, taken down some years ago by 
one of the students, entered Amherst College last year; 
while several were fighting with the American boys 
"Over There." 

The only real joy of possession is the power which 
it confers for a larger life of service. Has it been the 
reader's good fortune ever to save a human life? A cousin 
of mine, an officer in the submarine service of the Royal 
Engineers, told me a year or two before the war that he 
was never quite happy because he had spent all his life 
acquiring special capacities which he never in the least 
expected to be able to put to practical use. This war has 
given to him, at least, what possessions could never have 
offered. 

It almost requires the fabulous Jack to overcome the 
hoary giants of prejudice and custom, or the irrepressible 
energy of the Gorgon. It has been helpful to remember 
away "down North" the stand which Archbishop 
Ireland took for public schools. When the Episcopal 
clergyman for Labrador, whom we had been influential 
in bringing out from England, decided to start an un- 
denominational boarding-school on his section of the 
coast, we began to hope that we might yet live to see 
our sporadic effort become a policy. Laymen in St. 
John's, led by the Rev. Dr. Edgar Jones, a most pro- 
gressive clergyman, sympathized in dollars, and we 
were able to back the effort. A splendid volunteer head 
teacher will arrive in the spring to begin work. The ef- 
fort still needs much help; but I am persuaded that a 
chain of undenominational schools can be started that 
will react on the whole country. Already a scheme for 
a similar uplift for the west coast is being promulgated. 

In a letter written to my wife some years ago I find 



PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION 269 

that my convictions on the subject of education were no 
less firm than they are to-day. One came to the conclu- 
sion that "ignorance is the worst cause of suffering on 
our coast, and our 'religion' is fostering it. True, it has 
denominational schools, but these are to bolster up 
special ecclesiastical bodies, and are not half so good as 
Government schools would be. The 'goods delivered' in 
the schools are not educational in the best sense, and 
are all too often inefficiently offered. Instead of making 
the children ambitious to go on learning through life, 
they make them tired. There is no effort to stimulate the 
play side; and in our north end of the Colony's territory 
there are no trades taught, no new ideas, no manual 
training — it is all so-called 'arts' and Creeds." 



CHAPTER XVI 

"WHO HATH DESniED THE SEA?" 

We are somewliat superstitious down here still, and not 
a few believe that shoals and submerged rocks are like 
sirens which charm vessels to their doom. 

On one occasion, as late in the fall we were creeping 
up the Straits of Belle Isle in the only motor boat then 
in use there, our new toy broke down, and with a strong 
onshore wind we gradually drifted in toward the high 
cliffs. It was a heavy boat, and though we rowed our 
best we realized that we must soon be on the rocks, 
where a strong surf was breaking. So we lashed all our 
lines together and cast over our anchors, hoping to find 
bottom. Alas, the water was too deep. Darkness came 
on and the prospect of a long, weary night struggling 
for safety made us thrill with excitement. Suddenly a 
schooner's lights, utterly unexpected, loomed up, coming 
head on toward us. Like Saul and his asses, we no longer 
cared about our craft so long as we escaped. At once we 
lashed the hurricane light on the boat-hook and waved 
it to and fro on high to make sure of attracting attention. 
To our dismay the schooner, now almost in hail, in- 
continently tacked, and, making for the open sea, soon 
left us far astern. We fired our guns, we shouted in 
unison, we lit flares. All to no purpose. Surely it must 
have been a phantom vessel sent to mock us. Suddenly 
our amateur engineer, who had all the time been working 
away at the scrap-heap of parts into which he had dis- 
membered the motor, got a faint kick out of one cylinder 
— a second — a third, then two, three, and then a sol- 
itary one again. It was exactly like a case of blocked 



WHO HATH DESmED THE SEA? 271 

heart. But it was enough with our oars to make us move 
slowly ahead. By much stimulating and watchful nurs- 
ing we limped along on the one cylinder, and about mid- 
night found ourselves alongside the phantom ship, 
which we had followed into the harbour "afar off." 
Angry enough at their desertion of us in distress, we 
went aboard just to tell them what we thought of their 
behaviour. But their explanation entirely disarmed us. 
"Them cliffs is haunted," said the skipper. "More'n one 
light 's been seen there than ever any man lit. When us 
saw you'se light flashing round right in on the cliffs, us 
knowed it was no place for Christian men that time o' 
night. Us guessed it was just fairies or devils trying to 
toll us in." 

We had no hghthouses on Labrador in those days, and 
though hundreds of vessels, crowded often with women 
and children, had to pass up and down the coast each 
spring and fall, still not a single island, harbour, cape, or 
reef had any light to mark it, and many boats were un- 
necessarily lost as a result. 

Most of the schooners of this large fleet are small. 
Many are old and poorly "found" in running gear. Their 
decks are so crowded with boats, barrels, gear, wood, and 
other impedimenta, that to reef or handle sails on a dark 
night is almost impossible; while below they were often 
so crowded with women and children going North with 
their men for the summer fishing on the Labrador shore, 
that I have had to crawl on my knees to get at a patient, 
after climbing down through the main hatch. These craft 
are quite unfitted for a rough night at sea, especially 
as there always are icebergs or big pans about, which if 
touched would each spell another "vessel missing." So 
the craft all creep North and South in the spring and fall 
along the land, darting into harbours before dark, and 



272 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

leaving before dawn if the night proves "civil." Yet 
many a time I have seen these little vessels with their 
precious cargoes becalmed, or with wind ahead, just 
unable to make anchorage, and often on moonless nights 
when the barometer has been low and the sky threaten- 
ing. As there were no Hghts on the land, it would have 
been madness to try and make harbours after sundown. 

I have known the cruel, long anxiety of heart which 
the dilemma involved. It has been our great pleasure 
sometimes to run out and tow vessels in out of their dis- 
tress. I can still feel the grip of one fine skipper, who 
came aboard when the sea eased down. The only harbour 
available for us had been very small, and the water too 
deep for his poor gear. So when he started to drift, we 
had given him a Hne and let him hold on to us through 
the night, with his own stern only a few yards from the 
cliffs under his lee, and all his loved ones, as well as his 
freighters, a good deal nearer heaven than he wished 
them to be. 

We had frequently written to the Government of this 
neglect of lights for the coast. But Labrador has no 
representative in the Newfoundland Parliament, and 
legislators who never visited Labrador had unimagina- 
tive minds. Year after year went by and nothing was 
done. So I spoke to many friends of the dire need for a 
light near Battle Harbour Hospital. Practically every 
one of the Northern craft ran right by us many times as 
they fished first in the Gulf and later on the east coast, 
and so had to go past that comer of land. I have seen a 
hundred vessels come and anchor near by in a single 
evening. When the money was donated, our architect 
designed the building, and a friend promised to endow 
the effort, so that the salary of the light-keeper might be 
permanent. The material was cut and sent North, when 






fef.,v^ s 



s 




. ~l. 


< 




-J 


i Vt^ 


\^ 


>\-K 






a 








H 




Z 




O 






;l^^i, :: 




WHO HATH DESmED THE SEA? 273 

we were politely told that the Government could not 
permit private ownership of lights — a very proper de- 
cision, too. They told us that the year before money had 
been voted by the House for lights, and the first would 
be erected near Battle Harbour. This was done, and the 
Double Island Light has been a veritable Godsend to me 
as well as to thousands of others many times since that 
day. 

One hundred miles north of Indian Tickle, a place also 
directly in the run of all the fishing schooners, a light 
was much needed. On a certain voyage coming South 
with the fleet in the fall, we had all tried to make the 
harbour, but it shut down suddenly before nightfall 
with a blanket of fog which you could almost cut with 
a knife, and being inside many reefs, and unable to make 
the open, we were all forced to anchor. Where we were 
exactly none of us knew, for we had all pushed on for the 
harbour as much as we dared. There were eleven riding- 
lights visible around us when a rift came in the fog. We 
hoped against hope that we had made the harbour. A 
fierce northeaster gathered strength as night fell, and a 
mighty sea began to heave in. Soon we strained at our 
anchors in the big seas, and heavy water swept down 
our decks from bow to stem. Our patients were dressed 
and our boats gotten ready, though it all had only a 
psychological value. Gradually we missed first one and 
then another of the riding-lights, and it was not difficult 
to guess what had happened. When daylight broke, only 
one boat was left — a large vessel called the Yosemite, 
and she was drifting right down toward us. Suddenly she 
touched a reef, turned on her side, and we sS,w the seas 
carry her over the breakers, the crew hanging on to her 
bilge. Steaming to our anchors had saved us. All the 
vessels that went ashore became matchwood. But before 



274 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

we could get our anchors or slip them, our main steam 
pipe gave out and we had to blow down our boilers. It 
was now a race between the engineers trying to repair 
the damage and the shortening hours of daylight. On 
the result depended quite possibly the lives of us all. I 
cannot remember one sweeter sound than the raucous 
voice of the engineer just in the nick of time calling out, 
"Right for'ard," and then the signal of the engine-room 
bell in the tell-tale in our little wheel-house. The Govern- 
ment has since put a fine little light in summer on White 
Point, the point off which we lay. 

Farther north, right by our hospital at Indian Har- 
bour, is a narrow tickle known as the "White Cockade." 
Through this most of the fleet pass, and here also we had 
planned for a lighthouse. When we were forbidden to put 
our material at Battle Harbour, we suggested moving to 
this almost equally important point. But it fell under the 
same category, and soon after the Government put a 
good light there also. The fishermen, therefore, suggested 
that we should offer our peripatetic, would-be lighthouse 
to the Government for some new place each year. 

We have not much now to complain of so far as the 
needs of our present stage of evolution goes. We have 
wireless stations, quite a number of lights, not a few 
landmarks, and a ten times better mail and transport 
service than the much wealthier and more able Do- 
minion of Canada could and ought to give to her long 
shore from Quebec to the eastern "Newfoundland" 
boundary on the Straits Labrador. 

He is not a great legislator who only makes provision 
for certainties. True, the West has shown such riches and 
capacity that it has paid better to develop it first. But 
there is no excuse now whatever for neglecting the East. 
The Dominion would have been well advised, indeed, 



WHO HATH DESIRED THE SEA? 275 

had she years ago built a railway to the east coast, short- 
ening the steamer communication with England to only 
two nights at sea, and saving twenty-four hours for the 
mails between London and Toronto. The war has shown 
how easily she could have afforded it. Most ardently I 
had hoped that she might have turned some of her Ger- 
man prisoner labour in so invaluable a direction. 

Had the reindeer installation been handled by the 
Newfoundland Government years ago as it should have 
been, Labrador would have yielded to our boys in France 
a very material assistance in meat and furs. Canada now 
could and should, if only in the interest of her native 
population, begin on this problem as soon as peace is 
declared. 

The fact that a thing possesses vitality is a guarantee 
that it will grow if it can. Each new focus will expand, 
and caterpillar-like cast off its old clothing for better. 
The first necessity for economy and efficiency in our 
work has been to get our patients quickly to us or to be 
able to get to them. Experience has shown us that while 
boats entirely dependent on motors are cheapest, it is 
not always safe to do open-sea work in such launches 
without a secondary and more reliable means of pro- 
gression. The stories of a doctor's work in these launches 
would fill a volume by themselves. The first Northern 
Messenger, a small "hot-head" boat, was replaced and 
sold to pay part of the cost of Northern Messenger num- 
ber two. This in its turn was wrecked on an uncharted 
shoal with Dr. West on board, and her insurance used 
to help to procure Northern Messenger number three — 
which is the beautiful boat which now serves Harrington, 
our most westerly hospital. We are largely indebted for 
her to Mr. William Bowditch, of Milton, Massachusetts. 

Dr. Hare, our first doctor at that station, never wrote 



276 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

his own experiences, but one of the Yale volunteers who 
worked under him wrote a story founded on fact, from 
which the following incident is suggestive. 

Once, running home before a wind in the Gulf, the 
doctor suddenly missed his little son Pat, and looking 
round saw him struggling in the water, already many 
yards astern. Dr. Hare, who was at the tiller at the time, 
instantly jumped over after him. The child was finally 
disappearing when he reached him at last and held his 
head above water. Meanwhile the engineer, who had 
been below, jumped on deck to find the sails flapping in 
the wind and the boat head to sea. With the intuitive 
quickness of our people in matters pertaining to the sea, 
he took in the situation in a second, and though entirely 
alone manoeuvred the boat so cleverly as to pick them 
both up before they perished in these frigid waters. 
Pat's young life was saved, only to be given a short few 
years later in France for the same fight for the kingdom 
of righteousness which his home life had made his familiar 
ideal. 

The forty-five-foot, "hot-head" yawl Daryl, given us 
by the Dutch Reformed friends in New York, was sold 
to the Hudson Bay Company. At first she was naturally 
called the Flying Dutchman, and was most useful; but 
here we have learned when a better instrument is avail- 
able that it is the truest economy to scrap-heap the old. 
We were to give delivery of the boat in BaflSn's Land. 
There were plenty of volunteers for the task, for the 
tough jobs are the very ones which appeal to real men. 
It would be well if the churches realized this fact and 
that therein lies the real secret of Christianity. The im- 
pression that being a Christian is a soft job inevitably 
brings our religion into contempt. I had been in England 
that spring, and had been able to arrange that the mail 



WHO HATH DESIRED THE SEA? 277 

steamer bound for Montreal on which I took passage 
should stop and drop me off Belle Isle if the crusaders 
who were to take this launch on her long voyage North 
would stand out across our pathway. Mr. Marconi per- 
sonally took an interest in the venture. The launch was 
to wait at our most easterly Labrador station, and we 
were to keep telling her our position. The boat was in 
charge of Mr. John Rowland and Mr. Robert English, 
both of Yale. It created quite a furor among the passen- 
gers on our great ship, when she stopped in mid-ocean, 
as it appeared to them, and lowered an erratic doctor 
over the side on to a midget, whose mast-tops one looked 
down upon from the liner's rail. The sensation was all 
the more marked as we disappeared over the rail cling- 
ing to two large pots of geraniums — an importation 
which we regarded as very much worth while. 

With an old Hudson Bay man, Mr. George Ford, to 
act as interpreter, and a Harvard colleague, who to his 
infinite chagrin was recalled by a wireless from his 
parents almost before starting, the little ship and her 
crew of three disappeared *' over the edge " beyond com- 
munication. I should mention that the Company had 
promised an engineer for the launch, but he had begged 
off when he understood the nature of the projected ex- 
pedition; so Yale decided that they were men enough to 
do without any outside help. 

September had nearly gone, and no news had come 
from the boys. I owe some one an infinite debt for a 
temperament which does not go halfway to meet troubles; 
but even I was a little worried when unkind rumours that 
we had sold a boat that was not safe were capped by a 
father's letter to say that he "had heard the reports"! 
Fortunately, two days later, as the Strathcona lay taking 
on whale meat for winter dog food at the northernmost 



278 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

factory, the Northern mail steamer came in. On board 
were our returned wanderers, and papa, who had gone 
down as far as the Labrador steamer runs to look for 
them, as proud and happy as a man has a right to be 
over sons who do things. The boys had not only reached 
Baffin's Land, but had explored over a hundred miles of 
its uncharted coast-line, crossed to Cape Wolstenholme, 
navigated Stupart's Bay — northeast of Ungava — and 
finally returned to Baffin's Land, coming back to Cart- 
wright on the Hudson Bay Company's steamer Pelican. 
It was a splendid record, especially when we remember 
the fierce currents and tremendous rise and fall of tides 
in that distant land. This latter was so great that having 
anchored one night in three fathoms of water in what 
appeared to be a good harbour, they had awakened in 
the morning to the fact that they were in a pond a full 
mile in the country, left stranded by the retiring tide. 

Our last "hot-head," the Pomiuk, in a heavy gale of 
wind was smashed to atoms on a terrible reef of rocks off 
Domino Point a mile from land — fortunately with no 
one aboard. Yet another of our fine yawls, the Andrew 
McCosh, given us by the students of Princeton, was 
driven from her anchors on to the dangerous Point Amour, 
where years ago, H.M.S. Lily was lost, and whose bones 
still lie bleaching on the rocky foreshore at the foot of 
the cliffs. Much as I love the sea, it made one rather 
"sore" that it should serve us such a turn as wrecking 
the McCosh. I have been on the sea for over thirty 
years and never lost a vessel while aboard her, but to 
look on while the waves destroyed so beautiful a handmaid 
almost reconciled me to the statement that in heaven 
there shall "be no more sea." 

It was near this same spot that in November, 1905, 
a very old vessel, while trying to cross the Straits in a 



WHO HATH DESniED THE SEA? 279 

breeze, suddenly sprung a leak whicli sent her to the 
bottom in spite of all the pumping which could be done. 
The six men aboard were able to keep afloat at that time 
of year in the open Atlantic out of sight of land for five 
days and nights- They had nothing to eat but dry bread, 
and no covering of any kind. The winds were heavy and 
the seas high all the while. By patiently keeping their 
little boat's head to the wind with the oars, for they had 
not any sails, day after day and night after night, and 
backing her astern when a breaker threatened to over- 
whelm them, they eventually reached land safe and 
sound. 

The special interest about the launches has always 
been the pleasant connection which they have enabled 
us to maintain with the universities. Yale crews, Harvard 
crews, Princeton crews, Johns Hopkins crews. College of 
Physicians and Surgeons crews, and combined crews of 
many others, have in succeeding years thus become inter- 
ested. Occasionally these men have taken back some of 
their Labrador shipmates to the United States for a 
year's education, and in that and other ways, so they 
say, have they themselves received much real joy and 
inspiration. 

In order to maintain the interest which Canada had 
taken in our work, it had in some way to be organized. 
We had volunteer honorary secretaries in a few cities, 
but no way of keeping them informed of our needs and 
our progress. In New England a most loyal friend. Miss 
Emma White, who ever since has been secretary and 
devoted helper of the Labrador work there, had started 
a regular association with a board of directors and had 
taken an office in Beacon Street, Boston. This associa- 
tion now and again published little brochures of our 
work, or ordered out a few copies of the English mag- 



280 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

azine called "The Toilers of the Deep." It was suggested 
that we might with advantage publish a quarterly 
pamphlet of our own. This was made possible by the 
generous help of the late Miss Julia Greenshields, of 
Toronto, who undertook not only to edit, but also per- 
sonally to finance any loss on a little magazine to be 
entitled "Among the Deep-Sea Fishers." This has been 
maintained ever since, and has been responsible for help- 
ing to raise many of the funds to enable us to "carry on." 

We had also begun to get friends in New York. Dr. 
Charles Parkhurst, famous especially for his plucky ex- 
posure of the former rottenness of the police force of that 
city, had asked me to give an illustrated lecture at his 
mission in the Bowery. After my talk a gentleman present, 
to my blank astonishment, gave me a cheque for five 
hundred dollars. It was the beginning of a lifelong friend- 
ship with one who has, for all the succeeding years, 
given far more than money, namely, the constant in- 
spiration of his own attitude to life and his wise counsel 
— to say nothing of the value of the endorsation of his 
name. His eldest son, one of the ablest of the rising New 
York architects, became chairman of the Grenfell Asso- 
ciation of America, and gave us both of his time and 
talent — he being responsible, as voluntary architect, for 
many of our present buildings, including the Institute at 
St. John's, Newfoundland. 

This spread of interest in the United States greatly 
increased our correspondence, with an odd result. Amer- 
icans apparently all believed that this Colony was part 
of Canada, and that the postage was two cents as to the 
Dominion. This mistake left us six cents to pay on every 
letter, and sixteen on any which were overweight. On 
one occasion the postmaster offered me so many taxable 
letters that I decided to accept only one, and let the 



WHO HATH DESniED THE SEA? 281 

others go back. That one contained a cheque for a hun- 
dred dollars for the Mission. I naturally took the rest, 
and found every one of them to be bills, gossip, or from 
autograph-hunters. 

On inquiry, our Postmaster-General informed me that 
it was not possible to arrange a two-cent postal rate with 
America. It had been tried and abandoned, because 
Canada wanted a share for carrying the letters through 
her territory. He told me, however, that he would agree 
gladly if the United States offered it. On my visit to 
Washington I had the honour of dining with Lord Bryce, 
our Ambassador there and an old friend of my father's, 
and I mentioned the matter to him. He could not, how- 
ever, commend my efforts to the Government, as I had 
no credentials as a special delegate. There was nothing 
to do but take my place in the queue of importunates 
waiting to interview the Postmaster-General. When at 
length I had been moved to the top of the bench, I was 
called in, and very soon explained my mission. I received 
a most cordial hearing, but merely the information that 
a note would be made of my request and filed. 

It suddenly flashed upon me that Americans had equal 
fishing rights with ourselves on the Labrador coast, and 
that quite a number visited there every year. Possibly 
the grant of a two-cent postage would be a welcome 
little "sop" to them. Mr. Meyer, who was the Post- 
master-General at the time, said that it made all the 
difference if the reduced rate would in any way encour- 
age the American mercantile marine. He bade me draw 
a careful list of reasons in favour of my proposal, and 
promised to give it careful attention. 

It so happened that a few days later I mentioned the 
matter to Colonel McCook at whose home I was staying 
in New York. Colonel McCook, known as "Fighting 



282 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

McCook," from the fact that he was the only one of 
nine brothers not killed in the Civil War, at once took 
up the cudgels in my behalf, left for Washington the 
following day, and wired me on the next morning, "All 
arranged. Congratulations" — and I had the pleasure 
of telegraphing the Postmaster-General in St. John's 
that I had arranged the two-cent postage rate with the 
United States and Newfoundland. A few days later I 
received a marked copy of a Newfoundland paper saying 
how capable a Government they possessed, seeing that 
now they had so successfully put through the two-cent 
post for the Colony — and that was all the notice ever 
taken of my only little political intrigue; except that a 
year or two later, meeting Mr. Meyer in Cambridge, he 
whispered in my ear, "We were going out of office in four 
days, or you would never have got that two-cent post 
law of yours through so easily." 

In the spring of 1907 I was in England, and before I 
left, my old University was good enough to offer me an 
honorary degree of Doctor of Medicine of Oxford. As it 
was the first occasion that that respectable old Univer- 
sity had ever given that particular degree to any one, I 
was naturally not a little gratified. The day of the con- 
ferring of it will ever live in my memory. My cousin, the 
Professor of Paleontology, half of whose life was spent 
in the desert of Egypt digging for papyri in old dust- 
heaps, was considered the most appropriate person to 
stand sponsor for me — a would-be pioneer of a new 
civilization in the sub-arctic. 

The words with which the Public Orator introduced 
me to the Vice-Chancellor, being in Latin, seem to me 
interesting as a relic rather than as a statement of fact : 
'. "Lisignissime Vice-Cancellarie vosque egregii Pro- 



f 



WHO HATH DESIRED THE SEA? 283 

curatores: Adest civis Britannicus, hujus academise olim 
alumnus, nunc Novum Orbem incolentibus quam nos- 
tratibus notus. Hie ille est qui quindecim abbinc annos 
in litus Labradorium profeetus est, ut solivagis in mari 
Boreali piscatoribus ope medica succurreret; quo in 
munere obeundo Oceani pericula, quae ibi formidosis- 
sima sunt, contempsit dum miseris et mserentibus so- 
latium aC lumen afferret. Nunc quantum homini licet, in 
ipsius Christi vestigiis, si fas est dicere, insistere videtur, 
vir vere Christianus. Jure igitur eum laudamus cujus 
laudibus non ipse solum sed etiam Academia nostra 
omatur. 

"Prsesenta ad vos Wilfredum Thomassum Grenfell, 
ut admittatur ad gradum Doctoris in Medicina Honoris 
Causa." 

As we, the only two Doctors Grenfell extant, marched 
solemnly back down the aisle side by side, the antithesis 
of what doctorates called for struck my sense of humour 
most forcibly. I had hired the gorgeous robes of scarlet 
box cloth and carmine silk for the occasion, never ex- 
pecting to wear them again. But some years later, when 
yet another honorary Doctorate, of Laws, was most gen- 
erously conferred upon me by a University of our Ameri- 
can cousins, I felt it incumbent on me to uphold if pos- 
sible the British end of the ritual. A cable brought me 
just in time the box-cloth surtout. Commencement cere- 
monies in the United States are in June; and the latitude 
was that of Rome. For years I had spent the hot months 
always in the sub-arctic. The assembly hall was small and 
crowded to bursting — not even all the graduating class 
could get in, much less all their friends. The temperature 
was in three figures. The scarlet box cloth got hotter and 
hotter as we paraded in and about the campus. My face 
outrivalled the gown in colour. I have made many lobster 



284 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

men out of the boiled limbs of those admirable adjmicts 
of a Northern diet, but I had never expected to pose as 
one in the flesh. The most lasting impression which the 
ceremony left on my mind is of my volunteer summer 
secretary, who stood almost on my toes as he delivered 
the valedictory address of his class. I still see his grad- 
ually wilting, boiled collar, and the tiny rivulet which 
trickled down his neck as he warmed to his subject. We 
were the best of friends, but I felt that glow of semi- 
satisfaction that comes to the man who finds that he is 
no longer the only one seasick on board. 

About this time King Edward most graciously pre- 
sented me, as one of his birthday honours, with a Com- 
panionship in the Order of St. Michael and St. George — 
most useful persons for any man to have as companions, 
especially in a work like ours, both being famous for 
downing dragons and devils. My American friends im- 
mediately knighted me. The papers and magazines 
knighted me in both the United States and Canada. But 
that got me into trouble, for only kings can make pawns 
into knights, and I had to appeal several times to the 
Associated Press to save myself being dubbed poseur. 
I have protested at meetings when the chairman has 
knighted me; at banquets, when the master of ceremo- 
nies has knighted me. I gave it up lest accusation should 
arise against me, when at a semi-religious meeting I ut- 
tered a feeble protest against the title to which I have no 
right, and my introducer merely repeated it the more 
firmly, informing the audience meanwhile that I was 
"too modest to use it." 

There was attached to the conferring of the Order one 
elective latitude — it could either be sent out or wait till 
I returned to England and attended a levee with the 
other recipients. I had a great desire to see the King, and. 



1 



WHO HATH DESmED THE SEA? 285 

though it meant a year's waiting, I requested to be al- 
lowed to do so. This not only was most courteously 
granted, but also the permission to let my presence in 
England be known to the Hereditary Grand Chamber- 
lain, and the King would give me a private audience. 
When the day arrived, I repaired to Buckingham Palace, 
where I waited for an hour in the reception room in 
company with a small, stout clergyman who was very 
affable. I learned later that he was the Archbishop of 
Canterbury, who was carrying a fat Bible from Boston, 
England, I believe, to be presented to the United States 
of America. 

At last Sir Frederick Treves, who kindly acted as my 
introducer, took me up to the King's study — that King 
whose life his skill had saved. There a most courteous gen- 
tleman made me perfectly at home, and talked of Lab- 
rador and North Newfoundland and our work as if he 
had lived there. He asked especially about the American 
helpers and interest, and laughed heartily when I told 
him how many freeborn Americans had gladly taken the 
oath of loyalty to His Majesty, when called up to act as 
special constables for me in his oldest Colony. He left the 
impression on my mind that he was a real Englishman in 
spirit, though he had spoken with what I took to be a 
slight German accent. The sports and games of the Col- 
ony I had noticed interested him very much, and all ref- 
erences to the splendid seafaring genius of the people also 
found an appreciative echo in his heart. When at last he 
handed me a long box with a gorgeous medal and ribbon, 
and bade me good-bye, I vowed I could sing "God save 
the King" louder than ever if I could do so without har- 
rowing the feelings of my more tuneful neighbours. 

When later, as a major in an American surgical unit in 
France, I was serving the R.A.M.C., the ribbon of the 



286 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

Order was actually of real service to me. It undoubtedly 
opened some closed doors, though it proved a puzzle to 
every A.D.M.S. to whom I had to explain the anomaly of 
my position when I had to go and worry him for permis- 
sion to cross the road or some new imaginary line. In 
England, and even in America, I found that the fact that 
the King had recognized one's work was a real material 
asset. It was a credential — only on a larger scale — like 
that from our Minister to the Colonies, the Marquis of 
Ripon, who kindly had given me his blessing in writing 
when first I visited Canada. 

How far signs of superiority are permissible is to my 
mind an open question. Hereditary human superiority 
does not necessarily exist, because selective precautions 
are not taken, and the environment of the superior is very 
apt to enfeeble the physical machine, anyhow. The ques- 
tion of the hereditary superiority of a man's soul, being 
outside my sphere, I leave to the theologians. History, 
which is the school of experience, belies the theory, what- 
ever current science may say. As for the giving of hered- 
itary titles, it is significant that they do not as a rule go 
to scholars or even scientific men, but to physical fight- 
ers, being physical rewards for material services. When 
these are in the possession of offspring no longer capable 
of rendering such services, it appears ridiculous that they 
should sail under false colours. 

To make a man a hereditary duke for being humble and 
modest, or hereditary marquis for being unselfish and 
generous, or an earl for being a man of peace, and a bene- 
factor in the things which make for peace, such as a good 
husband and father and comrade, has, so far as I know, 
never been tried. Some of the so-called lesser honours, 
such as knighthood, are reserved for these. However, an 
order of knightly citizens, so long as they are real knights. 



WHO HATH DESIRED THE SEA? 287 

is, after all, little more than the gold key of the Phi Beta 
Kappa, or the red triangle of the Y.M.C.A. worker, or the 
Red Cross badge of the nurse. We are human, anyhow, 
and such concessions, seeing that they do have an un- 
doubted stimulating value in the present stage of our 
development, to an Englishman seem permissible. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE REINDEER EXPERIMENT 

Labrador will never be a "vineland," a land of corn and 
wine, or a country where fenced cities will be needed to 
keep out the milk and honey. But though there may be 
other sections of the Empire that can produce more dol- 
lars, Labrador will, like Norway and Sweden, produce 
Vikings, and it is said that the man behind the gun is still 
of some moment. 

In past years we have made quite extensive experi- 
ments in trying to adapt possible food supplies to this 
climate. I had seventeen bags of the hardiest cereal seeds 
known sent me. They consisted of barley from Lapland, 
from Russia, from Abyssinia, Mansbury barley and Fin- 
nish oats. All the seeds came from the experimental sta- 
tion at Rampart, Alaska, and were grown in latitude 
63° 30', which is two degrees north of Cape Chidley. 

I find in the notes of one of my earliest voyages my 
satisfaction at the fact that a storm with lightning and 
thunder had just passed over the boat and freshened up 
some rhubarb which I was growing in a box. It had been 
presented to me by the Governor to carry down to Battle 
Harbour, and I was very eager that it, my first agricul- 
tural venture, should not fail. 

Everywhere along the coast the inability to get a 
proper diet, owing to the difficulties of successful farming 
even on ever so small a scale, had aroused my mind to 
the necessity of doing something along that line. In one 
small cottage I saw a poor woman zealously guarding an 
aged rooster. 

"Have you got a hen.''" I asked her. 



THE REINDEER EXPERIMENT 289 

"No, Doctor; I had one, but she died last year." 

" Then why ever do you keep that rooster?" 

"Oh! I hopes some day to get a hen. I've had him five 
years. The last manager of the mill gave him to me, but 
you'se sees he can't never go out and walk around be- 
cause of the dogs, so I just keeps he under that settle." 

Pathetic as were her efforts at stock farming, I must 
admit that my sympathies were all with the incarcerated 
rooster. 

The problem of the dogs seemed an insurmountable 
one. The Moravians' records abound in stories of their 
destructiveness. Mr. Hesketh Pritchard writes: "Dr. 
Grenfell records two children and one man killed by the 
dogs. This is fortunately a much less terrible record than 
that shown farther north by the Moravian Missions. The 
savage dogs did great harm at those stations one winter." 
Among other accidents, a boy of thirteen, strong and well, 
was coming home from his father's kayak to his mother. 
After some time, as he did not arrive, they went to search 
for him and found that the dogs had already killed and 
eaten a good part of him. A full-grown man, driving to 
Battle Harbour Hospital, was killed by his dogs almost 
at our doors. 

The wolves of the country only pack when deer are 
about. As a contrast to our dogs, wolves have never been 
known to kill a man in Labrador, so it would be more cor- 
rect to speak of a doggish wolf than a wolfish dog. It is 
an odd thing and a f ortimate one that in this country, 
where it is very common to have been bitten by a dog, we 
never have been able to find any trace of hydrophobia. 

A visitor returning to New York after a summer on 
the coast wrote as follows: "One of my lasting remem- 
brances of Battle Harbour will be the dreadful dogs. The 
Mission team were on an island far removed, but there 



290 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

were a number of settlers' dogs which dehghted in making 
the nights hideous. Never before have I seen dogs stand 
up Hke men and grapple with each other in a fight, and 
when made to move on, renew the battle round the corner." 

Our efforts at agriculture had taught us not to expect 
too much of the country. A New Zealand cousin, Martyn 
Spencer, a graduate of Macdonald College of Agricul- 
ture, gave us two years' work. His experience showed that 
while dogs continued to be in common use, cattle-raising 
was impossible. Of a flock of forty Herdwick sheep given 
by Dr. Wakefield, the dogs killed twenty-seven at one 
time. Angora goats, which we had imported, perished in 
the winter for lack of proper food. Our land cost so much 
to reclaim for hay, being soaked in humic acid, that we 
had always to import that commodity at a cost which 
made more cows than absolutely essential very inadvis- 
able. Weasels, rats, hawks, and vermin needed a man's 
whole time if our chickens were to be properly guarded 
and repay keeping at all. An alfalfa sent us from Wash- 
ington did well, and potatoes also gave a fair return, 
though our summer frosts often destroyed whole patches 
of the latter. Our imported plum and crabapple trees were 
ringed by mice beneath the snow in winter. At a farm 
which we cleared nine miles up a bay, so as to have it 
removed from the polar current, our oats never ripened, 
and our turnips and cabbage did not flourish in every case. 
We could not plant early enough, owing to the ground 
being frozen till July some years. 

On the other hand, when we looked at the hundreds 
of thousands of square miles on which caribou could live 
and increase without any help from man, and indeed in 
spite of all his machinations, our attention was naturally 
turned to reindeer farming, and I went to Washington to 
consult Dr. Sheldon Jackson, the Presbyterian mission- 



THE REINDEER EXPERIMENT 291 

ary from Alaska. It was he who had pioneered the intro- 
duction by the United States Government of domestic 
reindeer into Alaska. At Washington we received nothing 
but encouragement. Reindeer could make our wilderness 
smile. They would cost only the protection necessary. 
They multiply steadily, breeding every year for eight or 
ten years after their second season. A selected herd should 
double itself every three years. 

The skins are very valuable — there is no better non- 
conductor of heat. The centre of the hair is not a hollow 
cylinder, but a series of air bubbles which do not soak 
water, and therefore can be used with advantage for life- 
saving cushions. The skins are splendid also for motor 
robes, and now invaluable in the air service. The meat is 
tender and appetizing, and sold as a game delicacy in New 
York. The deer fatten well on the abundant mosses of a 
country such as ours. 

Sir William MacGregor, the Governor of Newfound- 
land at the time, had samples of the mosses collected 
around the coast and sent to Kew Botanical Gardens for 
positive identification. The Cladonia Rangiferina, or 
Iceland moss, proved very abundant. It was claimed, 
however, that the reindeer would eat any of such plants 
and shrubs as our coast offers in summer. 

As long ago as the year 1903 my interest in the domes- 
tication of deer had led me to experiment with a young 
caribou. We had him on the Strathcona nearly all one 
summer. He was a great pet on board, and demonstrated 
how easily trained these animals are. He followed me 
about like a dog, and called after me as I left the ship's 
side in a boat if we did not take him with us. He was as 
inquisitive as a monkey or as the black bear which we had 
had two years before. We twice caught him in the chart- 
room chewing up white paper, for on his first raid there he 



A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

had found an apple just magnanimously sent us from the 
shore as a delicacy. 

Friends, inspired by Mr. William Howell Reed, of Bos- 
ton, collected the money for a consignment of reindeer, 
and we accordingly sent to Lapland to purchase as many 
of the animals as we could afford. The expense was not so 
much in the cost of the deer as in the transport. They 
could not be shipped till they had themselves hauled 
down to the beach enough moss to feed them on their pas- 
sage across the Atlantic. Between two hundred and fifty 
and three hundred were purchased, and three Lapp fam- 
ilies hired to teach some of our local people how to herd 
them. When at last snow enough fell for the sledges to 
haul the moss down to the landwash, it was dark all day 
around the North Cape. 

Fifty years hence in all probability the Lapps will be 
an extinct race, as even within the past twelve or fifteen 
years, districts in which thousands of domesticated rein- 
deer grazed, now possess but a few hundreds. 

The good ship Anita, which conveyed the herd to us, 
steamed in for southern Newfoundland and then worked 
her way North as far as the ice would permit. At St. 
Anthony everything was frozen up, and the men walked 
out of the harbour mouth on the sea ice to meet the 
steamer bringing the deer. The whole three hundred were 
landed on the ice in Cremailliere, some three miles to the 
southward of St. Anthony Hospital, and though many 
fell through into the sea, they proved hardy and resource- 
ful enough to reach the land, where they gathered around 
the tinkling bells of the old deer without a single loss 
from land to land. 

One of our workers at St. Anthony that winter wrote 
that "the most exciting moment was when the woman 
was lowered in her own sledge over the steamer's side 



THE REINDEER EXPERIMENT 293 

on to the ice, drawn to the shore, and transferred to one 
of Dr. Grenfell's komatiks, as she had hurt her leg on the 
voyage. The sight of all the strange men surrounding her 
frightened her, but she was finally reassured, threw aside 
her coverings, and clutched her frying-pan, which she 
had hidden under a sheepskin. When she had it safely in 
her arms she allowed the men to lift her and put her on 
the komatik." When the doctor at the hospital advised 
that her leg would best be treated by operation, the man 
said, "She is a pretty old woman, and does n't need a 
very good leg much longer." She was thirty-five! 

An Irish friend had volunteered to come out and watch 
the experiment in our interest — and this he did most 
efficiently. The deer flourished and increased rapidly. 
Unfortunately the Lapps did not like our country. They 
complained that North Newfoundland was too cold for 
them and they wanted to return home. One family left 
after the first year. A rise in salary kept three of the men, 
but the following season they wanted more than we had 
funds to meet, and we were forced to decide, wrongly, I 
fear, to let them go. The old herder warned me, "No 
Lapps, no deer"; but I thought too much in terms of 
Mission finances, the Government having withdrawn 
their grant toward the herders' salaries. Trusting to the 
confidence in their own ability of the locally trained men, 
I therefore let the Lapp herders go home. The love of the 
Lapps for their deer is like a fisherman's for his vessel, 
and seems a master passion. They appeared even to 
grudge om* having any deer tethered away from their 
care. 

To us it seemed strange that these Lapps always con- 
tended that the work was too hard, and that the only 
reason that they were always gone from camp was that 
there were no wolves to keep the herd together. They 



294 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

claimed that we must have a big fence or the deer would 
go off into the country. They, of course, both when with 
us and in Lapland as well, lived and slept where the herd 
was. They told us that the deer no longer obeyed the 
warning summons of the old does' bells, having no nat- 
ural enemy to fear; and one told me, "Money no good. 
Doctor, if herd no increase." Reindeer seemed to be the 
complement of their souls. 

Meanwhile the Alaskan experiment was realizing all 
of Dr. Jackson's happiest hopes; but it had a strong 
Government grant and backing and plenty of skilled 
superintendence. The lack of those were our weaknesses. 
Our deer thrived splendidly and multiplied as we had 
predicted. We went thirty miles in a day with them with 
ease. We hauled our firewood out, using half a dozen 
hauling teams every day. Every fortnight during the 
rush of patients at the hospital in summer we could afford 
to kill a deer. The milk was excellent in quality and 
sweet, and preserved perfectly well in rubber-capped 
bottles. The cheese was nourishing and a welcome addi- 
tion to the local diet. At the close of the fourth year we 
had a thousand deer. 

A paper of the serious standing of the "Wall Street 
Journal," writing at about that time, under the title 
"Reindeer Venison from Alaska," had this to say: "At 
different times in the past twenty years the Government 
imported reindeer into Alaska — about twelve hundred 
in all — in hopes to provide food for the natives in the 
future. The plan caused some amusement and some criti- 
cism at the time. Subsequent developments, however, 
have justified the attempt. The herds have now increased 
to about forty thousand animals, and are rapidly be- 
coming still more numerous. The natives own about two 
thirds of the number. Shipments of meat have been made 



THE REINDEER EXPERIMENT 295 

to the Pacific Coast cities. Last year the sales of venison 
and skins amounted to $25,000. It is claimed that the 
vast tmidra, or treeless frozen plains of Alaska, will 
support at least ten million animals. The federal authori- 
ties in charge are so optimistic of the future outlook that 
the prediction is made that within twenty-five years the 
United States can draw a considerable part of its meat 
supply from Alaska." What can be done in Alaska can be 
done in Labrador, and with its better facilities for ship- 
ping and handling the product, the greater future ought 
to be the prize of the latter country. 

In the spring of 1912 there were five hundred fawns, 
and at one time we had gathered into our corral for tag- 
ging no less than twelve hundred and fifty reindeer. Of 
these we sold fifty to the Government of Canada for the 
Peace River District. There they were lost because they 
were placed in a flat country, densely wooded with alders, 
and not near the barren lands. We also sold a few to 
clubs, in order to try and introduce the deer. These sales 
would have done the experiment no injury, but with the 
fifty to Canada went my chief herder and two of my other 
herders from Labrador. This loss, from which we never 
recovered, coincided with an outbreak of hostility to- 
ward the deer among the resident population, who live 
entirely on the sea edge. Only long afterwards did we find 
out that it was partly because they feared that we would 
force deer upon them and do away with their dogs. The 
local Government official told me only the other day that 
the second generation from this would have very little 
good to say of the short-sightedness of these men who 
let such a valuable industry fail to succeed. 

With the increasing cares of the enlarging Mission, 
with Lieutenant Lindsay gone back to Ireland, and no 
one to superintend the herding, the successful handling of 



296 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

the deer imperceptibly declined. The tags on the ears 
were no longer put in; the bells were not replaced in the 
old localities. The herd was driven, not led as before — 
was paid for, not loved. These differences at the time 
were marked by increasing poaching on the herd by the 
people. Here and there at first they had killed a deer un- 
known to us; and finally we caught one hidden in a man's 
woodpile, and several offenders were sent to jail. 

We appealed to the Newfoimdland Government for 
protection, as to be policeman and magistrate for the 
herd which one held in trust was an anomalous position. 
I was ordered by them to sit on the bench when these 
cases were up, as I did not own the deer. The section of 
land on which we had the animals is a peninsula of ap- 
proximately one hundred and fifty square miles. It is cut 
off by a narrow, low neck about eight miles long. During 
all our years of acquaintance with the coast not a dozen 
caribou had been killed on it, for they do not cross the 
neck to the northward. But when we applied for a na- 
tional preserve, that no deer at all might be killed on the 
peninsula, and so we might run a big fence across the 
neck with a couple of herders' houses along the line of it, 
a petition, signed by part of the "voters," went up to St. 
John's, against such permission being granted us. The 
petition stated that the deer destroyed the people's 
"gardens," that they were a danger to the lives of the 
settlers, whose dogs went wild when they crossed their 
path, and they claimed that the herd "led men into temp- 
tation," because if there were no reindeer to tempt men 
to kill them, there would be none killed. The deer thus 
were supposed to be the cause of making cattle-thieves 
out of honest men ! The result was that a law was passed 
that no domestic reindeer might be shot north of the line 
of the neck for which we had applied, and which we 




A PART OF THE REINDEER HERD 




REINDEER TEAMS MEETING A DOG TEAM 



THE REINDEER EXPERIMENT 297 

intended to fence. This only made matters ten times 
worse, for if the deer either strayed or else were driven 
across the line, the killing of them was thus legalized. 

The deer had cost us, landed, some fifty-one dollars 
apiece. Three years of herding under the adverse condi- 
tions of lack of support from either Government or people 
had not lessened the per caput expense very materially. 
If we had shot some one's fifty-dollar cow, our name 
would have been anathema — but we lost two hundred 
and fifty deer one winter. In addition to this, when we 
moved the deer to a spot near another village on a high 
bluff, over a hundred died in summer, either — according 
to the report of the herders — from falling over the cliffs 
driven by dogs, or of a sickness of which we could not dis- 
cover the nature, though we thought that it resembled 
a kind of pneumonia. 

* The poaching got so bad that we took every means in 
our power to catch the guilty parties. But it was a very 
difficult^ thing to do. A dead deer lies quiet, keeps for 
weeks where he falls in our winter climate, and can be 
surreptitiously removed by day or night. The little Lapp 
dogs occasionally scented them beneath the snow, and 
many tell-tale "paunches" showed where deer had been 
killed and carried off. * 

I had been treating the hunchback boy and only child 
of a fisherman for whom I had very great respect. His was 
the home where the Methodist minister always boarded, 
and he was looked upon as a pillar of piety. After a 
straightening by frame treatment, the boy's spine had 
been ankylosed by an operation; and as every one felt 
sorry for the little fellow, we were often able to send him 
gifts. One day the father came to me, evidently in great 
trouble, to have what proved to be a most uncommon 
private talk. To my utter surprise he began: "Doctor, I 



298 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

can no longer live and keep the secret that I shot two of 
your reindeer. I have brought you ninety dollars, all the 
cash that I have, and I want to ask your forgiveness, after 
all you have done for me." Needless to say, it was freely 
given, but it made me feel more than ever that the deer 
must be moved to some other country. 

It was about this year that the Government for the first 
time granted us a resident policeman — previously we had 
had to be our own police. Fortunately the man sent was 
quite a smart fellow. A dozen or so deer had been killed 
along the section of our coast, and so skilfully that even 
though it was done under the noses of the herders no evi- 
dence to convict could be obtained. It so happened, how- 
ever, that while one of the herders was eating a piece of 
one of the slaughtered animals which he had discovered, 
and that the thieves had not been able to carry off, his 
teeth met on a still well-formed rifle bullet of number 22 
calibre. This type of rifle we knew was scarcely ever used 
on our coast, and the policeman at once made a round to 
take every one. He returned with three, which was really 
the whole stock. 

A piece of meat was now placed at a reasonable dis- 
tance, also some bags of snow, flour, etc., and a number 
of bullets fired into them. These bullets were then all pri- 
vately marked, and shuffled up. Our own deductions were 
made, and a man from twenty miles away summoned, 
arrested, and brought up. He brought witnesses and 
friends, apparently to impress the court — one espe- 
cially, who most vehemently protested that he knew the 
owner of the rifle, and that he was never out of his house 
at the time that the deer would have been killed. In court 
was a man, for twenty-seven years agent in Labrador for 
the Hudson Bay Company — a crack shot and a most 
expert hunter. He was called up, given the big pile of bul- 



THE REINDEER EXPERIMENT 299 

lets, and told to try and sort them, by the groove marks, 
into those fired by the three different rifles. We then 
handed him the control bullet, and he put it instantly on 
one of the piles. It was the pile that had been fired from 
the rifle of the accused. This man, in testifying, in order 
to clear himself, had let out the fact that his rifle had not 
been kept in his house, but in the house of the vociferous 
witness — whom we now arrested, convicted, and con- 
demned to jail for six months or two hundred dollars fine 
— the latter alternative being given only because we 
knew that he had not the necessary sum. Protesting 
as loudly as he had previously witnessed, he went to jail; 
but the rest let out threats that they were coming back 
with others to set him free. We had only a frame wooden 
jail, and a rheumatic jailer of over seventy years, hired to 
hobble around by day and see that the prisoners were 
fed and kept orderly. We announced, therefore, that our 
Hudson Bay friend, with his rifle loaded, would be night 
jailer. 

A few days passed by. The prisoner did not like im- 
proving the public thoroughfare for our benefit, while 
those " who were just as bad as he" went free. Our old 
jailer took good care that he should hear what good times 
they were having and laughing at him for being caught. 
Indeed, he liked it so little that he gave the whole plot 
away — at least what he called the whole. This landed 
four more of his friends in the same honest and public- 
spirited occupation which he was himself pursuing; 
though all escaped shortly afterwards by paying fines to 
the Government which aggregated some eight hundred 
dollars — which sum was largely paid by others for 
them. 

There was no way, however, definitely to stop the 
steady decrease in the numbers of the herd; and though 



300 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

we moved them to new pastures around the coast, and 
fenced them in such small mobile corrals as we could 
afiFord, they were not safe. On several occasions we found 
dead deer with buckshot in them, which had "fallen over 
the cliffs." Twice we discovered that deer had even been 
killed within our own corral. One had been successfully 
removed, and the other trussed-up carcass had been hid- 
den until a good opportunity offered for it to follow suit. 
I do not wish to leave the impression on the minds of my 
readers that every man on this part of the coast is a 
poacher. Far from it. But the majority of the best men 
were against the reindeer experiment from the moment 
that the first trouble arose. A new obligation of social 
life was introduced. This implied restraint in such trifling 
things as their having to fence their tiny gardens, protect 
small stray hay-pooks, and discriminate into what they 
discharged their ubiquitous blunderbusses. 

Meanwhile the steadily increasing demand for meat, 
especially since the war began, caused outside interest in 
the experiment; and both the owners of Anticosti Island, 
and a firm in the West who were commencing reindeer 
farming on a commercial basis, opened negotiations with 
us for the purchase of our herd. In the original outlay, 
however, the Canadian Dominion Government had taken 
an interest to the amount of five thousand dollars, so it 
was necessary to get their opinion on the subject. Their 
Department of Indian Affairs happened to be looking 
for some satisfactory way of helping out their Labrador 
Indian populationr They sent down and made inquiries, 
and came to the conclusion that they would themselves 
take the matter up, as they had done with buffalo, elk, 
and other animals in the West. 

In 1917 all preparations for transferring the deer were 
made, but war conditions called their steamer away and 



THE REINDEER EXPERIMENT 301 

transport was delayed until 1918. Again their steamer 
was called off, so we decided to take the deer across our- 
selves in our splendid three-masted schooner, the George 
B. Cluett. She, alas, was delayed in America by the sub- 
marine scare, and it was the end of September instead of 
June when she finally arrived. It was a poor season for our 
dangerous North coast and a very bad time for moving 
the deer, whose rutting season was just beginning. My 
herders, too, were now much reduced in numbers. Most 
of them had gone to the war, and as one had been sick all 
summer, practically only two were available. To add to 
the difficulty, many small herds of reindeer were loose 
in the country outside the corral. 

i However, we felt that the venture must be attempted 
at all hazards, even if it delayed our beautiful ship taking 
a cargo of food to the Allies — as she was scheduled to do 
as soon as possible — and though it was a serious risk ix) 
remain anchored in the shallow open roadstead off the 
spot where the deer had to be taken aboard. The work 
was all new to us. The deer, instead of being tame as 
they had previously been, were wild at best, and wilder 
still from their breeding season. The days went by, and 
we succeeded in getting only a few aboard. We were all 
greenhorns with the lassoes and lariats which we impro- 
vised. A gale of wind came on and nothing could be done 
but lie up. 

Then followed a fine Sunday morning. It was intensely 
interesting to note the attitude which my crew could 
take toward my decision to work all day after morning 
prayers. We talked briefly over the emphasis laid by the 
four Evangelists on Christ's attitude toward the day of 
rest, and what it might mean, if we allowed a rare fine 
day to go by, to that long section of coast which we had 
not yet this year visited, and which might thus miss the 



302 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

opportunity of seeing a doctor before Christmas. As since 
this war has begun I have felt that the Christ whom I 
wanted to follow would be in France, so now I felt that 
the Christ of my ideal would go ashore and get those deer 
in spite of the great breach of convention which it would 
mean for a "Mission" doctor to work in any way, except 
in the many ways he has to work every Sunday of his life. 
The whole crew followed me when I went ashore, saying 
that they shared my view — all except the mate, who 
spent his Sunday in bed. Idleness is not rest to some na- 
tures, either to body or mind, and when at night we all 
turned in at ten o'clock, wet through — for it had rained 
in the evening — and tired out, we were able to say our 
prayers with just as light hearts, feeling that we had put 
sixty-eight deer aboard, as if we had enjoyed that fore- 
taste of what some still believe to be the rest of heaven. 
Rest for our souls we certainly had, and to some of us that 
is the rest which God calls His own and intends shall be 
ours also. When later I spoke to some young men about 
this, it seemed to them a Chestertonian paradox, that we 
should actually hold a Sunday service and then go forth 
to render it. They thought that Sunday prayers had to 
do only with the escaping the consequences of one's sins. 
I I still believe that we were absolutely right in our the- 
ory of the introduction of the deer into this North coim- 
try, and that we shall be justified in it by posterity. That 
these thousands of miles, now useless to men, will be 
grazed over one day by countless herds of deer affording 
milk, meat, clothing, transport, and pleasure to the hu- 
man race, is certain. They do not by any means destroy 
the land over which they rove. On the contrary, the deep 
ruts made by their feet, like the ponies' feet in Iceland, 
serve to drain the surface water and dry the land. The 
kicking and pawing of the moss-covered ground with their 



THE RELNDEER EXPERIMENT 303 

spade-like feet tear it up, level it, and cut off the dense 
moss and creeping plants, bring the sub-soil to the top, 
and over the whole the big herd spreads a good covering 
of manure. 

Reinder-trodden barrens, after a short rest, yield more 
grass and cattle food than ever before. No domesticated 
animal can tolerate the cold of this country and find sus- 
tenance for itself as can the deer. It can live as far north 
as the musk-ox. Peary found reindeer in plenty on the 
shores of the polar sea. The great barren lands of Canada, 
from Hudson Bay north of Chesterfield Inlet away to the 
west, carry tens of thousands of wild caribou. Mr. J. B. 
Tyrrell's photographs show armies of them advancing; 
the stags with their lordly horns are seen passing close to 
the camera in serried ranks that seem to have no end. 

Our own experiment is far from being a failure. It has 
been a success, even if only the corpse is left in Newfound- 
land. We have proved conclusively that the deer can 
live, thrive, and multiply on the otherwise perfectly 
valueless areas of this North country, and furnish a rap- 
idly increasing domesticated "raw material" for a food 
and clothing supply to its people. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE ICE-PAN ADVENTURE 

On Easter Sunday, the 21st of April, 1908, it was still 
winter with us in northern Newfoundland. Everything 
was covered with snow and ice. I was returning to the hos- 
pital after morning service, when a boy came running 
over with the news that a large team of dogs had come 
from sixty miles to the southward to get a doctor to come 
at once on an urgent case. A fortnight before we had op- 
erated on a young man for acute bone disease of the 
thigh, but when he was sent home the people had 
allowed the wound to close, and poisoned matter had 
accumulated. As it seemed probable that we should have 
to remove the leg, there was no time to be lost, and I 
therefore started immediately, the messengers following 
me with their team. 

My dogs were especially good ones and had pulled me 
out of many a previous scrape by their sagacity and en- 
durance. Moody, Watch, Spy, Doc, Brin, Jerry, Sue, and 
Jack were as beautiful beasts as ever hauled a komatik 
over our Northern barrens. The messengers had been 
anxious that their team should travel back with mine, for 
their animals were slow at best, and moreover were now 
tired from their long journey. My dogs, however, were so 
powerful that it was impossible to hold them back, and 
though I twice managed to wait for the following sledge, 
I had reached a village twenty miles to the south and had 
already fed my team when the others caught up. 

That night the wind came in from sea, bringing with 
it both fog and rain, softening the snow and making the 
travelling very difficult. Besides this a heavy sea began 




A SPRING SCENE AT ST. ANTHONY 



^^, 



i)^^P> 



^^ T^-^ '^-P^ t- 



_ ^ -^ t-». 



t 



DOG RACE AT ST. ANTHONY 



THE ICE-PAN ADVENTURE 305 

heaving into the bay on the shores of which lay the little 
hamlet where I spent my first night. Our journey the 
next day would be over forty miles, the first ten lying on 
an arm of the sea. 

In order not to be separated too long from my friends I 
sent them ahead of me by two hours, appointing as a 
rendezvous the log tilt on the other side of the bay. As 
I started the first rain of the year began to fall, and I was 
obliged to keep on what we call the "ballicaters," or ice 
barricades, for a much longer distance up the bay than 
I had anticipated. The sea, rolling in during the previous 
night, had smashed the ponderous layer of surface ice 
right up to the landwash. Between the huge ice-pans were 
gaping chasms, while half a mile out all was clear water. 

Three miles from the shore is a small island situated in 
the middle of the bay. This had preserved an ice bridge, 
so that by crossing a few cracks I managed to get to it 
safely. From that point it was only four miles to the oppo- 
site shore, a saving of several miles if one could make it, 
instead of following the landwash round the bay. Al- 
though the ice looked rough, it seemed good, though one 
could see that it had been smashed up by the incoming 
sea and packed in tight again by the easterly wind. There- 
fore, without giving the matter a second thought, I flung 
myself on the komatik and the dogs started for the rocky 
promontory some four miles distant. 

All went well till we were within about a quarter of a 
mile of our objective point. Then the wind dropped sud- 
denly, and I noticed simultaneously that we were travel- 
ling over "sish" ice. By stabbing down with my whip- 
handle I could drive it through the thin coating of young 
ice which had formed on the surface. "Sish" ice is made 
up of tiny bits formed by the pounding together of the 
large pans by the heavy seas. So quickly had the wind 



306 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

veered and come offshore, and so rapidly did the packed 
slob, relieved of the inward pressure of the easterly- 
breeze, "run abroad," that already I could not see any 
pan larger than ten feet square. The whole field of ice 
was loosening so rapidly that no retreat was possible. 

There was not a moment to lose. I dragged off my oil- 
skins and threw myself on my hands and knees beside the 
komatik so as to give a larger base to hold, shouting at 
the same time to my team to make a dash for the shore. 
We had not gone twenty yards when the dogs scented 
danger and hesitated, and the komatik sank instantly 
into the soft slob. Thus the dogs had to pull much harder, 
causing them to sink also. 

It flashed across my mind that earlier in the year a man 
had been drowned in this same way by his team tangling 
their traces around him in the slob. I loosened my sheath- 
knife, scrambled forward and cut the traces, retaining 
the leader's trace wound securely round my wrist. 

As I was in the water I could not discern anything that 
would bear us up, but I noticed that my leading dog was 
wallowing about near a piece of snow, packed and frozen 
together like a huge snowball, some twenty-five yards 
away. Upon this he had managed to scramble. He shook 
the ice and water from his shaggy coat and turned around 
to look for me. Perched up there out of the frigid water 
he seemed to think the situation the most natural in the 
world, and the weird black marking of his face made him 
appear to be grinning with satisfaction. The rest of us 
were bogged like flies in treacle. 

Gradually I succeeded in hauhng myself along by the 
line which was still attached to my wrist, and was nearly 
up to the snow-raft, when the leader turned adroitly 
round, slipped out of his harness, and once more leered 
at me with his grinning face. 



THE ICE-PAN ADVENTURE 307 

There seemed nothing to be done, and I was beginning 
to feel drowsy with the cold, when I noticed the trace of 
another dog near by. He had fallen through close to the 
pan, and was now unable to force his way out. Along his 
line I hauled myself, using him as a kind of bow anchor — 
and I soon lay, with my dogs around me, on the Httle 
island of slob ice. 

The piece of frozen snow on which we lay was so small 
that it was evident we must all be drowned if we were 
forced to remain on it as it was driven seaward into open 
water. Twenty yards away was a larger and firmer pan 
floating in the sish, and if we could reach it I felt that we 
might postpone for a time the death which seemed ines- 
capable. To my great satisfaction I now found that my 
hunting knife was still tied on to the back of one of the 
dogs, where I had attached it when we first fell through. 
Soon the sealskin traces hanging on the dogs' harnesses 
were cut and spliced together to form one long line. I di- 
vided this and fastened the ends to the backs of my two 
leaders, attaching the two other ends to my own wrists. 
My long sealskin boots, reaching to my hips, were full of 
ice and water, and I took them off and tied them sepa- 
rately on the dogs' backs. I had already lost my coat, cap, 
gloves, and overalls. 

Nothing seemed to be able to induce the dogs to move, 
even though I kept throwing them off the ice into the 
water. Perhaps it was only natural that they should strug- 
gle back, for once in the water they could see no other pan 
to which to swim. It flashed into my mind that my small 
black spaniel which was with me was as light as a feather 
and could get across with no diflBculty. I showed him the 
direction and then flung a bit of ice toward the desired 
goal. Without a second's hesitation he made a dash and 
reached the pan safely, as the tough layer of sea ice easily 



SOS A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

carried his weight. As he lay on the white surface looking 
like a round black fuss ball, my leaders could plainly 
see him. They now understood what I wanted and fought 
their way bravely toward the little retriever, carrying 
with them the line that gave me yet another chance for 
my life. The other dogs followed them, and all but one 
succeeded in getting out on the new haven of refuge. 

Taking all the run that the length of my little pan would 
afford, I made a dive, slithering along the surface as far 
as possible before I once again fell through. This time I 
had taken the precaution to tie the harnesses under the 
dogs' bellies so that they could not slip them off, and after 
a long fight I was able to drag myself onto the new pan. 

Though we had been working all the while toward the 
shore, the offshore wind had driven us a hundred yards 
farther seaward. On closer examination I found that the 
pan on which we were resting was not ice at all, but snow- 
covered slob, frozen into a mass which would .certainly 
eventually break up in the heavy sea, which was mo- 
mentarily increasing as the ice drove offshore before the 
wind. The westerly wind kept on rising — a bitter blast 
with us in winter, coming as it does over the Gulf ice. 

Some yards away I could still see my komatik with 
my thermos bottle and warm clothing on it, as well as 
matches and wood. In the memory of the oldest inhab- 
itant no one had ever been adrift on the ice in this bay, 
and unless the team which had gone ahead should happen 
to come back to look for me, there was not one chance in 
a thousand of my being seen. 

To protect myself from freezing I now cut down my 
long boots as far as the feet, and made a kind of jacket, 
which shielded my back from the rising wind. 

By midday I had passed the island to which I had 
crossed on the ice bridge. The bridge was gone, so that if 



THE ICE-PAN ADVENTURE 309 

I did succeed in reaching that island I should only be 
marooned there and die of starvation. Five miles away to 
the north side of the bay the immense pans of Arctic ice 
were surging to and fro in the ground seas and thunder- 
ing against the cliffs. No boat could have lived through 
such surf, even if I had been seen from that quarter. 
Though it was hardly safe to move about on my little 
pan, I saw that I must have the skins of some of my dogs, 
if I were to live the night out without freezing. With some 
difficulty I now succeeded in killing three of my dogs — 
and I envied those dead beasts whose troubles were over 
so quickly. I questioned if, once I passed into the open 
sea, it would not be better to use my trusty knife on my- 
self than to die by inches. 

But the necessity for work saved me from undue philos- 
ophizing; and night found me ten miles on my sea- 
ward voyage, with the three dogs skinned and their fur 
wrapped around me as a coat. I also frayed a small piece 
of rope into oakum and mixed it with the fat from the 
intestines of my dogs. But, alas, I found that the matches 
in my box, which was always chained to me, were soaked 
to a pulp and quite useless. Had I been able to make a fire 
out there at sea, it would have looked so uncanny that 
I felt sure that the fishermen friends, whose tiny light 
I could just discern twinkling away in the bay, would see 
it. The carcasses of my dogs I piled up to make a wind- 
break, and at intervals I took off my clothes, wrung them 
out, swung them in the wind, and put on first one and 
then the other inside, hoping that the heat of my body 
would thus dry them. My feet gave me the most trouble, 
as the moccasins were so easily soaked through in the 
snow. But I remembered the way in which the Lapps who 
tended our reindeer carried grass with them, to use in 
their boots in place of dry socks. As soon as I could sit 



310 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

down I began to unravel the ropes from the dogs' har- 
nesses, and although by this time my fingers were more 
or less frozen, I managed to stuff the oakum into my 
shoes. 

Shortly before I had opened a box containing some old 
football clothes which I had not seen for twenty years. 
I was wearing this costume at the time; and though my 
cap, coat, and gloves were gone, as I stood there in a 
pair of my old Oxford University running shorts, and 
red, yellow, and black Richmond football stockings, and 
a flannel shirt, I remembered involuntarily the Httle dying 
girl who asked to be dressed in her Sunday frock so that 
she might arrive in heaven properly attired. 

Forcing my biggest dog to lie down, I cuddled up close 
to him, drew the improvised dogskin rug over me, and 
proceeded to go to sleep. One hand being against the dog 
was warm, but the other was frozen, and about midnight 
I woke up shivering enough, so I thought, to shatter my 
frail pan to atoms. The moon was just rising, and the 
wind was steadily driving me toward the open sea. Sud- 
denly what seemed a miracle happened, for the wind 
veered, then dropped away entirely leaving it flat calm. 
I turned over and fell asleep again. I was next awakened 
by the sudden and persistent thought that I must have a 
flag, and accordingly set to work to disarticulate the 
frozen legs of my dead dogs. Cold as it was I determined 
to sacrifice my shirt to top this rude flagpole as soon as 
the daylight came. When the legs were at last tied to- 
gether with bits of old harness rope, they made the crook- 
edest flagstaff that it has ever been my lot to see. Though 
with the rising of the sun the frost came out of the dogs' 
legs to some extent, and the friction of waving it made the 
odd pole almost tie itself in knots, I could raise it three 
or four feet above my head, which was very important. 



THE ICE-PAN ADVENTURE 311 

Once or twice I thought that I could distinguish men 
against the distant cliffs — for I had drifted out of the 
bay into the sea — but the objects turned out to be trees. 
Once also I thought that I saw a boat appearing and dis- 
appearing on the surface of the water, but it proved to be 
only a small piece of ice bobbing up and down. The rock- 
ing of my cradle on the waves had helped me to sleep, and 
I felt as well as I ever did in my Kfe. I was confident that 
I could last another twenty-four hours if my boat would 
only hold out and not rot under the sun's rays. I could 
not help laughing at my position, standing hour after 
hour waving my shirt at those barren and lonely cliffs; 
but I can honestly say that from first to last not a single 
sensation of fear crossed my mind. 

My own faith in the mystery of immortality is so un- 
troubled that it now seemed almost natural to be passing 
to the portal of death from an ice-pan. Quite unbidden, 
the words of the old hymn kept running through my head : 

"My God, my Father, while I stray 
Far from my home on life's rough way. 
Oh, help me from my heart to say. 
Thy will be done." 

I had laid my wooden matches out to dry and was 
searching about on the pan for a piece of transparent ice 
which I could use as a burning-glass. I thought that I 
could make smoke enough to be seen from the land if only 
I could get some sort of a light. All at once I seemed to 
see the glitter of an oar, but I gave up the idea because 
I remembered that it was not water which lay between 
me and the land, but slob ice, and even if people had seen 
me, I did not imagine that they could force a boat 
through. The next time that I went back to my flag- 
waving, however, the glitter was very distinct, but my 
snow-glasses having been lost, I was partially snow-blind 



312 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

and distrusted my vision. But at last, besides the glide 
of an oar I made out the black streak of a boat's hull, and 
knew that if the pan held out for another hour I should be 
all right. The boat drew nearer and nearer, and I could 
make out my rescuers frantically waving. When they got 
close by they shouted, "Don't get excited. Keep on the 
pan where you are." They were far more excited than I, 
and had they only known as I did the sensations of a bath 
in the icy water, without the chance of drying one's self 
afterwards, they would not have expected me to wish to 
follow the example of the Apostle Peter. 

As the first man leaped on my pan and grasped my 
hand, not a word was spoken, but I could see the emo- 
tions which he was trying to force back. A swallow of the 
hot tea which had been thoughtfully sent out in a bottle, 
the dogs hoisted on board, and we started for home, now 
forging along in open water, now pushing the pans apart 
with the oars, and now jumping out on the ice and haul- 
ing the boat over the pans. 

It seems that the night before four men had been out 
on the headland cutting up some seals which they had 
killed in the fall. As they were leaving for home, my ice- 
raft must have drifted clear of Hare Island, and one of 
them, with his keen fisherman's eyes, had detected some- 
thing unusual on the ice. They at once returned to their 
village, saying that something living was adrift on the 
floe. The one man on that section of coast who owned a 
good spy-glass jumped up from his supper on hearing the 
news and hurried over to the lookout on the cliffs. Dusk 
though it was, he saw that a man was out on the ice, and 
noticed him every now and again waving his hands at the 
shore. He immediately surmised who it must be; so little 
as I thought it, when night was closing in the men at the 
village were trying to launch a boat. Miles of ice lay be- 



THE ICE-PAN ADVENTURE 313 

tween them and me, and the angry sea was hurling great 
blocks against the land. While I had considered myself a 
laughing-stock, bowing with my flag at those unrespon- 
sive chffs, many eyes were watching me. 

By daybreak a fine volunteer crew had been organized, 
and the boat, with such a force behind it, would, I believe, 
have gone through anything. After seeing the heavy 
breakers through which we were guided, as at last we ran 
in at the harbour mouth, I knew well what the wives of 
that crew had been thinking when they saw their loved 
ones depart on such an errand. 

Every soul in the village was waiting to shake hands as 
I landed; and even with the grip that one after another 
gave me, I did not find out that my hands were badly 
f rostburnt — a fact which I have realized since, however. 
I must have looked a weird object as I stepped ashore, 
tied up in rags, stuffed out with oakum, and wrapped in 
the bloody dogskins. 

The news had gone over to the hospital that I was lost, 
so I at once started north for St. Anthony, though I must 
confess that I did not greatly enjoy the trip, as I had to 
be hauled like a log, my feet being so frozen that I could 
not walk. For a few days subsequently I had painful re- 
minders of the adventure in my frozen hands and feet, 
which forced me to keep to my bed — an unwelcome and 
unusual interlude in my way of life. 
In our hallway stands a bronze tablet: 
"To the Memory of 

Three Noble Dogs 

Moody 

Watch 

Spy 

Whose lives were given 

For mine on the ice 

April 21st, 1908." 



314 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

The boy whose life I was intent on saving was brought 
to the hospital a day or so later in a boat, the ice having 
cleared off the coast temporarily; and he was soon on the 
highroad to recovery. 

We all love life, and I was glad to have a new lease of 
it before me. As I went to sleep that night there still rang 
through my ears the same verse of the old hymn which 
had been my companion on the ice-pan : 

"Oh, help me from my heart to say. 
Thy will be done.". 



CHAPTER XIX 

THEY THAT DO BUSINESS IN GREAT WATERS 

Contrary to her ungenerous reputation, even if vessels 
are lost on the Labrador, her almost unequalled series of 
harbours — so that from the Straits of Belle Isle to those 
of Hudson Bay there is not ten miles of coast anywhere 
without one — enables the crew to escape nearly every 
time. 

In 1883, in the North Sea in October, a hurricane de- 
stroyed twenty-five of our stout vessels on the Dogger 
Bank, cost us two hundred and seventy good lives, and 
left a hundred widows to mourn on the land. In 1889 a 
storm hit the north coast of Newfoundland, but too late 
in the season to injure much of the fishing fleet, which had 
for the most part gone South. But it caused immense 
damage to property and the loss of a few lives. As one of 
the testimonials to its fury, I saw the flooring and seats 
of the church in the mud of the harbour at St. Anthony 
at low tide even though that church had been founded 
entirely on a rock. We now concede that it is good econ- 
omy on our coast to have wire stays to ringbolts leaded 
into rocky foundations, to anchor small buildings. Our 
storms are mostly cyclones with wide vortices, and coming 
largely from the southwest or northwest, are offshore, and 
therefore less felt. 

We were once running along at full speed in a very 
thick fog, framing a course to just clear some nasty 
shoals on our port bow. There was nothing outside us and 
we had seen no ice of late, so I went below for some lunch, 
telling the mate to report land as soon as he saw any, and 
instructing the man at the wheel, if he heard a shout, to 



316 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

port his helm hard. The soup was still on the table when 
a loud shouting made us leap on the deck to see the ship 
going full tilt into an enormous iceberg, which seemed 
right at the end of the bowsprit. This unexpected monster 
was on our starboard bow, and the order to avoid the 
shoal was putting us headfirst into it. Our only chance 
was full speed and a starboard helm, and we actually 
grazed along the side of the berg. It seemed almost ludi- 
crous later to pick up a large island and run into a har- 
bour with grassy, sloping sides, out of which the fog was 
shut like a wall, and then to go ashore and bargain over 
buying a couple of cows, which were being sold, as the 
settler was moving to the mainland. 

Among the records of events of importance to us I find 
in 1908 that of the second real hurricane which I have 
ever seen. It began on Saturday, July 28, the height of 
our summer, with flat calm and sunshine alternating with 
small, fierce squalls. Though we had a falling barometer, 
this deceived us, and we anchored that evening in a shal- 
low and unsafe open roadstead about twenty miles from 
Indian Harbour Hospital. Fortunately our suspicions 
induced us to keep an anchor watch, and his warning 
made us get steam at midnight, and we brought up at 
daylight in the excellent narrow harbour in which the 
hospital stands. The holding ground there is deep mud in 
four fathoms of water, the best possible for us. Our only 
trouble was that the heavy tidal current would swing a 
ship uneasily broadside against an average wind force. 

It was blowing so strongly by this time that the hospi- 
tal yawl Daryl had already been driven ashore from her 
anchors, but still we were able to keep ours in the water, 
and getting a line to her, to heave her astern of our vessel 
with our powerful winch. The fury of the breeze grew 
worse as the day went on. All the fishing boats in the har- 



THAT DO BUSINESS IN GREAT WATERS 317 

bour filled and sank with the driving water. With the 
increase of violence of the weather we got up steam and 
steamed to our anchors to ease if possible the strain on 
our two chains and shore lines — a web which we had 
been able to weave before it was too late. By Sunday the 
gale had blown itself entirely away, and Monday morn- 
ing broke flat calm, with lovely sunshine, and only an 
enormous sullen ground sea. This is no uncommon game 
of Dame Nature's; she seemed to be only mocking at the 
destruction which she had wrought. 

Knowing that there must be many comrades in trouble, 
we were early away, and dancing like a bubble, we ran 
north, keeping as close inshore as we could, and watch- 
ing the coast-line with our glasses. The coast was littered 
with remains. Forty-one vessels had been lost; in one 
uninhabited roadstead alone, some forty miles away from 
Indian Harbour, lay sixteen wrecks. The shore here was 
lined with rude shelters made from the wreckage of spars 
and sails, and the women were busy cooking meals and 
"tidying up " the shacks as if they had lived there always. 

We soon set to work hauling off such vessels as would 
float. One, a large hardwood, well-fastened hull, we de- 
termined to save. Her name was Pendragon. The owner 
was aboard — a young man with no experience who had 
never previously owned a vessel. He was so appalled at 
the disaster that he decided to have her sold piecemeal 
and broken up. We attended the auction on the beach and 
bought each piece as it came to the hammer. Getting her 
off was the trouble. We adopted tactics of our own in- 
vention. Mousing together the two mastheads with a 
bight of rope, we put on it a large whoop traveller, and 
to that fastened our stoutest and longest line. Then first 
backing down to her on the very top of high water, we 
went "full speed ahead." Over she fell on her side and 



318 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

bumped along on the mud and shingle for a few yards. 
By repeated jerks she was eventually ours, but leaking 
so like a basket that we feared we should yet lose her. 
Pumps inside fortunately kept her free till we passed her 
topsail under her, and after dropping in sods and peat, we 
let the pressure from the outside keep them in place. 
When night fell I was played out, and told the crew they 
must let her sink. My two volunteer helpers, Albert 
Gould, of Bowdoin, and Paul Matheson, of Brown, how- 
ever, volunteered to pump all night. 

While hunting for a crew to take her South we came 
upon the wreck of a brand-new boat, only launched two 
months previously. She had been the pride of the skip- 
per's life. He was an old friend of mine, and we felt so 
sorry for him that we not only got him to take our vessel, 
but we handed it over for him to work out at the cost 
which we had paid for the pieces. He made a good living 
out of her for several years, but later she was. lost with 
all hands on some dangerous shoals near St. Anthony on 
a journey North. 

With fifty-odd people aboard, and a long trail of nine- 
teen fishing boats we eventually got back to Indian Har- 
bour, where every one joined in helping our friends in 
misfortune till the steamer came and took them South. 
They waved us farewell, and, quite undismayed, wished 
for better luck for themselves another season. 

The case of one skipper is well worth relating as show- 
ing their admirable optimism. He was sixty-seven years 
old, and had by hard saving earned his own schooner — 
a fine large vessel. He had arranged to sell her on his re- 
turn trip and live quietly on the proceeds on his potato 
patch in southern Newfoundland. His vessel had driven 
on a submerged reef and turned turtle. The crew had 
jumped for their Hves, not even saving their persQpal 



THAT DO BUSINESS IN GREAT WATERS 319 

clothing, watches, or instruments. We photographed the 
remains of the capsized hull floating on the surf. Yet this 
man, in the four days during which he was my guest, 
never once uttered a word of complaint. He had done all 
he could, and he " 'lowed that t' Lord knew better than 
he what was best." 

"But what will you do now. Skipper.?" I asked. 

"Why, get another," he replied; "I think them '11 trust 
me." 

One of our older vessels started a plank in a gale of 
wind in the Atlantic and went to the bottom without 
warning. In an open boat for six days with only a little 
dry bread and no covering of any sort, the crew fought 
rough seas and heavy breezes. But they handled her with 
the sea genius of our race; made land safely at last, and 
never said a word about the incident. On another occa- 
sion two men, who had been a fortnight adrift, had rowed 
one hundred and fifty miles, and had only the smallest 
modicum of food, came aboard our vessel. When I said, 
*'You are hungry, aren't you.?^" they merely replied, 
"Well, not over-much" — and only laughed when I sug- 
gested that perhaps a month in the open boat might have 
given them a real appetite. 

One October, south of St. Anthony, we were lying in 
the arm of a bay with two anchors and two warps 
out, one to each side of the narrow channel. The wind 
piled up the waters, much as it did in Pharaoh's day. We 
were flung astern yard by yard on the top of the seas, 
and when it was obvious that we must go ashore, we 
reversed our engines, slipped our line, and drove up high 
and dry to escape the bumping on the beach which 
was inevitable. There we lay for days. Meanwhile I 
had taken our launch into the river-mouth and was 
marooned there. For the launch blew right up on the 



320 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

bank in among the trees, and strive as we would, for 
days we could not even move her out again. 

Another spring we had a very close squeak of losing 
the Strathcona. While we were trying one morning to get 
out of a harbour, a sudden gale of wind came down upon 
us and pinned us tight, so that we could not move an inch. 
The pressure of the ice became more severe moment by 
moment, and meanwhile the ice between us and the shore 
seemed to be imperceptibly melting away. Naturally we 
tried every expedient we could think of to keep enough 
ice between us and the shore rocks to save the vessel be- 
ing swept over the rocky headland, toward which the 
irresistible tidal current was steadily forcing us. To make 
matters worse, we struck our propeller against a pan of 
ice and broke off one of the flanges close to the shaft. It 
became breathlessly exciting as the ship drew nearer and 
nearer to the rocks. We abandoned our boat when we 
saw that by trying to hold on to it any longer we should 
be jeopardizing the steamer. Twisting round helplessly 
as in a giant's arms, we were swept past the dangerous 
promontory and to our infinite joy carried out into the 
open Atlantic where there is room for all. Our boat was 
subsequently rescued frona the shore, and we were able 
to screw on a new blade to the propeller. 

Just after the big gale in 1908 His Excellency, Sir Wil- 
liam MacGregor, then Governor, was good enough to 
come and spend a short time surveying on our north 
coast. He was an expert in this line, as well as being a 
gold-medallist in medicine. Later he changed over from 
the Strathcona to the Government steamer Fiona. I 
acted as pilot among other capacities on that journey, 
and was unlucky enough to run her full tilt onto one of 
the only sandbanks on the coast in a narrow passage be- 
tween some islands and the mainland! The little Strath- 





ICEBERGS 



THAT DO BUSINESS IN GREAT WATERS 321 

cona, following behind, was in time to haul us off again, 
but the incident made the captain naturally distrust my 
ability, and as a result he would not approach the shore 
near enough for us to get the observations which we 
needed. Although we went round Cape Chidley into Un- 
gava Bay I could not regain his confidence sufficiently to 
go through the straits which I had myself sounded and 
surveyed. So we accomplished it in a small boat, getting 
good observations. Our best work, however, was done 
when His Excellency was content to be our guest. The 
hospital on board was used for the necessary instruments 
— four chronometers, two theodolites, guns, telescopes, 
camp furniture, and piles of books and printed forms. 
Mr. Albert Gould of Bowdoin was my secretary on board 
that year, and was of very great value to us. 

Though the work of an amateur. Sir WilHam's survey- 
ing was accepted by the Admiralty and the Royal Geo- 
graphical Society — his survey in Nigeria having proved 
to have not one single location a mile out of place when 
an official survey was run later. 

Many a time in the middle of a meal, some desired but 
unlucky star would cross the prime vertical, and all hands 
had to go up on deck and shiver while rows of figures were 
accumulated. Sir William told us that he would rather 
shoot a star any time than all the game ever hunted. 
One night my secretary, after sitting on a rock at a mov- 
able table from 5 p.m. till midnight, came in, his joints 
almost creaking with cold, and loaded with a pile of fig- 
ures which he assured us would crush the life out of most 
men. My mate that year was a stout and very short, 
plethoric person. When he stated that he preferred sur- 
veying to fishing, as it was going to benefit others so 
much, and that he was familiar with the joys of service, he 
was taken promptly at his word. It was a hot summer. 



322 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

The theodolite was a nine-inch one and weighed many 
pounds. We had climbed the face of a very steep moun- 
tain called Cape Mugford, some three thousand feet high 
— every inch of which distance we had to mount from 
dead sea-level. When at last Israel arrived on the sum- 
mit, he looked worried. He said that he had always 
thought surveying meant letting things drop down over 
the ship's side, and not carrying ballast up precipices. For 
his part he could now see that providing food for the 
world was good enough for him. He distinctly failed to 
grasp where the joy of this kind of service came in — and 
noting his condition as he lay on the ground and panted 
I decided to let it go at that. 

The Governor was a real MacGregor and a Presby- 
terian, and was therefore quite a believer in keeping Sun- 
day as a day of rest. But after morning prayers on the first 
fine day, after nearly a week of fog, he decided that he 
had had physical rest enough, and to get good observa- 
tions would bring him the recreation of spirit which he 
most needed. So he packed up for work, and happened to 
light on the unhappy Israel to row him a mile or so to the 
land. "Iz" was taken "all aback." He believed that you 
should not strain yourself ever — much less on Sundays. 
So from religious scruples he asked to be excused, though 
he offered to row any one ashore if he was only going to 
idle the hours away. After all, however, our Governor 
represented our King, and I was personally horrified, 
intending to correct Israel's position with a round turn, 
and show him that we are especially enjoined to obey 
"Governors and Rulers" — as better also than the sacri- 
fice of loafing. But the Governor forbade it, quietly un- 
packed, put his things away, and stayed aboard. Israel 
subsequently cultivated the habit of remaining in bed on 
Sundays — thereby escaping being led into temptation, 



THAT DO BUSINESS IN GREAT WATERS 323 

as even Governors would not be likely to go and tempt 
him in his bunk. 

I have had others refuse to help in really necessary 
work on Sunday. One skipper would not get the Strath- 
cona under way in answer to a wireless appeal to come to 
a woman in danger of dying from hemorrhage forty miles 
distant. When we prepared to start without him, he told 
me that he would go, but that it would be at the price of 
his soul and we would have to be responsible for that loss. 
We went all the same. 

Our charts, such as they were, were subsequently ac- 
cepted by the Royal Geographical Society of England, 
who generously invited me to lecture before them. They 
were later good enough to award me the Murchison Prize 
in 1911. Much of the work was really due to Sir William, 
and as much of it as I could put on him to the Sabbatarian 
"Iz." 

In connection with the scientific work on the coast I 
well remember the eclipse of October, 1905. All along the 
land it was perfectly visible. A break in the clouds oc- 
curred at exactly the right moment: one fisherman, to 
console the astronomers, said that he was very sorry, but 
that he supposed it did not much matter, as there would 
be another eclipse next week. The scientific explorer, who 
was devoting his attention to the effect on the earth's 
magnetism, spent the time of the eclipse in a dark cellar. 
Most wonderful magnetic disturbances had been occur- 
ring almost every night, and the night before the event a 
far from ordinary storm had upset his instruments, so 
that the effect of the eclipse on the magnetic indicators 
was scarcely distinguishable. He had just time after the 
thing was over to peep out and see the light returning. 
He had watched his thermometer and found that it fell 
three degrees during totality. 



324 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

The year 1908 at the mill we had built a new large 
schooner in honour of that devoted friend of Labrador, 
our secretary in Boston, and had named the vessel for 
her, the Emma E.White. She fetched Lloyd's full bounty 
for an A 1 ship. This was a feather in our caps, since she 
was designed and built by one of our own men, who was 
no "scholard, " having never learned to read or write. 
Will Hopkins can take an axe and a few tools into the 
green woods in the fall, and sail down the bay in a new 
schooner in the spring when the ice goes. To see him 
steaming the planking in the open in his own improvised 
boxes on the top of six feet of snow made me stand and 
take off my hat to him. He is no good at speech-making; 
he does not own a dress-suit, and he cannot dance a 
tango; but he is quite as useful a citizen as some who can, 
and his type of education is one which endears him to all. 
He gave me the great pleasure of having our friend come 
sailing into St. Anthony in the middle of a fine day, 
seated on the bow of her namesake, the beautiful and 
valuable product of his skill, just when we were all ready 
on the wharf to "sketch them both off," as our people 
call taking a photograph. 

Our increasing buildings being all of wood, and as the 
two largest were full of either helpless sick people or an 
ever-increasing batch of children, we wanted something 
safer than kerosene lamps to illuminate the rooms. The 
people here had never seen electric light "tamed," as it 
were, and to us it seemed almost too big a venture to in- 
stall a plant of our own. Home outfits were not common 
in those days even in the States, and we feared in any 
case that we could not run it regularly enough. No one 
except the head of the machine shop, a Labrador boy and 
Pratt graduate, knew the first thing about electricity, 
and he would not always be available. 



THAT DO BUSINESS IN GREAT WATERS 325 

However, with the help of friends we were able to pur- 
chase a hot-head vertical engine to generate our current; 
for our near-by streams freeze solid in winter. That en- 
gine has now been running for over ten years, and has 
given us electricity in St. Anthony Hospital for operating 
and X-ray work as well as all our lighting. Until he died, 
it was run the greater part of the time by an Eskimo boy 
whom we had brought down from the North Labrador, 
and who was convalescing from empyema. The installa- 
tion was efficiently done by a volunteer student from the 
Pratt Institute, Mr. Hause. 

On my lecture trip the previous winter a gentleman at 
whose house I was a guest told me that when quite a 
youth he had fought in the Civil War, been invalided 
home, and advised to take a sea voyage for his health. 
He therefore took passage with some Gloucester fisher- 
men and set sail for the Labrador. The crew proved to 
be Southern sympathizers, and one day, while my friend 
was ashore taking a walk, the skipper slipped out and 
left him marooned. He had with him neither money, 
spare clothing, nor anything else; and as British sympa- 
thies were also with the South, he had many doubts as 
to how the settlers would receive a penniless stranger and 
Northerner. So seeing his schooner bound in an easterly 
direction, he started literally to run along the shore, hop- 
ing that he might find where she went and catch her 
again. Mile after mile he went, tearing through the "tuck- 
amore" or dense undergrowth of gnarled trees, climbing 
over high cliffs, swimming or wading the innumerable 
rivers, skirting bays, and now and again finding a short 
beach along which he could hurry. At night, wet, dirty, 
tired, hungry, penniless, he came to a fisherman's cot- 
tage and asked shelter and food. He explained that he 
was an American gentleman taking a holiday, but had n't 



S26 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

a penny of money. It spoke well for the people that they 
accepted his story. He told me that they both fed and 
clothed him, and one kind-hearted man actually the next 
day gave him some oilskin clothing and a sou'wester hat 
— costly articles "on Labrador" in those days. So on and 
on and on he went, till at last arriving at Red Bay he 
found his schooner at anchor calmly fishing. He went 
aboard at once as if nothing had happened, and stayed 
there (having enjoyed enough pedestrian exercise for the 
time being) and no one ever referred to his having been 
left behind. He was now, however, forty years later, anx- 
ious to do something for the people of that section of the 
shore, and he gave me a thousand dollars toward building 
a small cottage for a district nurse. Forteau was the village 
chosen, and Dennison Cottage erected as a nursing sta- 
tion and dispensary. The people at first each gave a week 
toward its upkeep; and even now every man gives three 
days annually. The house has a good garden, little wards 
for in-patients, and is the centre of much useful indus- 
trial work, especially the making of artificial flowers. For 
twelve years now, Miss Florence Bailey, a nurse from the 
Mildmay Institute in London, has presided over its des- 
tinies, endeared herself to the people, and done most un- 
selfish and heroic work in that lonely station, which she 
has greatly enlarged and improved by her untiring efforts. 
It forms an admirable halfway house between Battle and 
Harrington Hospitals, each being about a hundred miles 
distant. A local trader once wrote me: "Sister Bailey did 
good work last year. That cottage hospital is a blessing 
to the people of this part of the shore. Who would think 
that by a little act of kindness done forty-odd years ago 
to an old soldier, we would now be reaping the benefit of 
such an act." 

Only one longer journey on foot on the Labrador coast 



THAT DO BUSINESS IN GREAT WATERS 327 

is on record. The traveller started from Quebec and walked 
to Battle Harbour. There he turned north and walked to 
Nakvak Bay. The distance as the crow flies is about foiu*- 
teen hundred miles. But the man had no boat of his own 
and only in one or two places accepted a passage. One bay 
on the east coast runs in for some hundred and fifty miles. 
Over this he got a boat fifty miles from the mouth. Round 
Kipokak and Makkovik, and the bays south of Hope- 
dale, he walked most of the way, and these run in for 
forty miles. He carried practically nothing with him, and 
depended on what boots and clothing the people gave 
him, eating berries and whatever else he could find while 
he was in the country. Those who housed him told me that 
they did not see any signs of madness about him, except 
his avoidance of men and refusal to go in boats or mix 
with others if he could in any way avoid it. He carried no 
gim. No one knew who he was nor why he went on such 
a "cruise." Long before he reached the North the theory 
that he was a murderer fleeing from justice got started, 
and at some places a very careful watch was kept over 
him. Arrived at Nakvak, he went to the house of every- 
one's friend, George Ford. That is one of the most inac- 
cessible places in the world. No mail steamer ever goes 
there, and no schooner ever anchors nearer than a few 
miles. It is at the bottom of a fjord twenty-five miles long, 
with very precipitous cliffs two thousand feet high on 
each side and bottomless water below. It was then thirty 
miles from the nearest house, with ranges of mountains 
between, and was the most northerly house on the Lab- 
rador. Here this phenomenon celebrated his arrival by 
climbing up onto the ridge of the house, when lo! most 
prosaic of accidents, he fell off and broke his neck. The 
puzzle has always been why he elected to carry an un- 
broken neck at such cost all that long distance. 



328 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

Many inexplicable things happen "on Labrador." 
Thus, one year while visiting at the head of Hamilton 
Inlet, a Scotch settler came aboard to ask my advice 
about a large animal that had appeared round his house. 
Though he had sat up night after night with his gun, he 
had never seen it. His children had seen it several times 
disappearing into the trees. The French agent of Revillon 
Freres, twenty miles away, had come over, and together 
they had tracked it, measured the footmarks in the mud, 
and even fenced some of them round. The stride was 
about eight feet, the marks as of the cloven hoofs of an ox. 
The children described the creature as looking like a huge 
hairy man; and several nights the dogs had been driven 
growling from the house into the water. Twice the whole 
family had heard the creature prowling aroimd the cot- 
tage, and tapping at the doors and windows. The now 
grown-up children persist in saying that they saw this 
wild thing. Their house is twenty miles up the large Grand 
River, and a hundred and fifty miles from the coast. 1 

An old fellow called Harry Howell was one winter night 
missing from his home. He had been hunting, and only 
too late, after a blizzard set in, was it discovered that he 
was absent. In the morning the men gathered to make a 
search, but at that moment in walked "old Harry"! He 
told me later that he was coming home in the afternoon 
when the blizzard began. It was dirty, thick of snow, and 
cold. Suddenly he heard bells ringing, and knew that it 
was fairies bidding him follow them — because he had 
followed them before. So off he went, pushing his way 
through the driving snow. When at last he reached the 
foot of a gnarled old tree in the forest, the bells stopped, 
and he knew that was the place where he must stay for 
the night. So he laid some of the partridges which he had 
killed into a hole in the snow close to the trunk, crawled 



THAT DO BUSINESS IN GREAT WATERS 329 

down and used them for a seat, and placed the rest of the 
frozen birds at his feet. Then he pulled up his dickey, or 
kossak, over his head, and with his back to the tree, went 
to sleep while the snow was still driving. There was no 
persuading that man that the ringing bells were in his own 
imagination. 

Many years ago a Norwegian captain on the Labrador 
told me the following story. One day the carpenter of his 
schooner, a man whom he had known for three voyages, 
and trusted thoroughly, was steering on the course which 
the mate had given him. All at once the mate came and 
found the man steering four points out. When he up- 
braided him, he answered, "He came and told me to." 
"Nobody did," replied the mate. "Go northwest." 

Three times the experience was repeated, and at last 
the mate reported the matter to the skipper. He imme- 
diately suggested, "Well, let us go on running in the 
direction he insists on taking for a while and see if any- 
thing happens." At the end of two hours they came upon 
a square-rigger with her decks just awash, and six men 
clinging to her rigging. As they came alongside the sinking 
vessel the carpenter pointed aghast to one of the rescued 
crew and cried out, "There's the man who came and told 
me the skipper said to change the course." 

In medicine, too, things happen which we professional 
men are just as unable to explain. A big-bodied, success- 
ful fisherman came aboard my steamer one day, saying 
that he had toothache. This was probable, for his jaw was 
swollen, his mouth hard to open, and the offending molar 
easily visible within. When I produced the forceps he 
protested most loudly that he would not have it touched 
for worlds. 

"Why, then, did you come to me?" I asked. "You are 
wasting my time." 



S30 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

"I wanted you to charm her, Doctor," he answered, 
quite naturally. 

"But, my dear friend, I do not know how to charm, and 
don't think it would do the slightest good. Doctors are 
not allowed to do such things." 

He was evidently very much put out, and turning round 
to go, said, "I knows why you'se won't charm her. It's 
because I'm a Roman Catholic." 

"Nonsense. If you really think that it would do any 
good, come along. You'll have to pay twenty-five cents 
exactly as if you had it pulled out." 

"Gladly enough. Doctor. Please go ahead." 

He sat on the rail, a burly carcass, the incarnation 
of materialism, while the doctor, feeling the size of a 
sandflea, put one finger into his mouth and touched the 
molar, while he repeated the most mystic nonsense he 
could think of, "Abracadabra Tiddly winkum Umslo- 
poga" — and then jumped the finger out lest the patient 
might close his ponderous jaw. The fisherman took a turn 
around the deck, pulled out the quarter, and solemnly 
handed it to me, saying, "All the pain has gone. Many 
thanks, Doctor." I found myself standing alone in amaze- 
ment, twiddling a miserable shilling, and wondering how 
I came to make such a fool of myself. 

A month later the patient again came to see me when 
we happened to be in his harbour. The swelling had gone, 
the molar was there. "Ne'er an ache out of her since,'* 
the patient laughed. I have not reported this end result 
to the committee of the American College of Surgeons, 
though much attention is now devoted to the follow-up 
and end-result department of surgery and medicine. ^ 



CHAPTER XX 

MARRIAGE 

It was now the fall of 1908, and the time had come for me 
to visit England again and try and arouse fresh interest in 
our work; and this motive was combined with the desire 
to see my old mother, who was now nearing her fourscore 
years. I decided to leave in November and return via 
America in the spring to receive the honorary degree of 
LL.D. from Williams College and of M.A. from Har- 
vard, which I had been generously offered. 

My lecture tour this winter was entrusted to an agency. 
Propaganda is a recognized necessity in human life, 
though it has little attraction for most men. To me having 
to ask personally for money even for other people was 
always a difficulty. Scores of times I have been blamed for 
not even stating in a lecture that we needed help. The dis- 
taste for beating the big drum, which lecturing for your 
own work always appears to be, makes me quite unable 
to see any virtue in not doing it, but just asking the Lord 
to do it. If I really were convinced that He would meet 
the expenses whether I worked or not, I should believe 
that neither would He let people suffer and die untended 
out here or anywhere else. Indeed, it would seem a work 
of supererogation to have to remind Him of the necessity 
that existed. 

The fact that we have to show pictures of the work 
which we are doing is tiresome and takes time, but it en- 
courages us to have pictures worth taking and to do deeds 
which we are not ashamed to narrate. It also stimulates 
others to give themselves as well as their money to similar 
kinds of work at their own doorsteps, to see how much 



332 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

like themselves their almoners are. Only to-day my vol- 
unteer secretary told me that he honestly expected to 
meet "a bearded old fogey in spectacles," not a man who 
can shoot his own dinner from the wing or who enjoys 
the justifiable pleasures of life. 

The religion of Christ never permitted me to accept 
the idea that there is "nothing to do, only believe." 
Every man ought to earn his own bread and the means to 
support his family. Why, then, should you have only to 
ask the Lord to give unasked the wherewithal to feed 
other people's families? 

Lecturing for philanthropies, only another word for the 
means to help along the Kingdom of God on earth, is in 
England usually carried on through the ordinary mis- 
sionary meetings; and in my previous experience they 
were not generally much credit to the splendid objects 
in view. The lectures were aften patronized by small 
audiences largely composed of women and children. 

That particular winter in England I had the privilege 
of addressing all sorts of workmen's clubs and city lec- 
ture-course audiences, people who would have "the 
shivers" almost if one had asked them to attend a "mis- 
sionary" lecture. The collection, or even the final mone- 
tary outcome, is far from being the test of the value of the 
address. To commend Christ's religion by minimizing 
in any way the prerogative He gave men of carrying on 
the work of His kingdom in their human efforts is to sap 
the very appeal that attracts manhood to Him. I never 
wanted to sing, "Oh! to be nothing, nothing." I always 
wished to sing, "Oh! make me something, something " — 
that shall leave some footprints on the sands of time, and 
have some record of talents gained to offer a Master 
whom we beheve to be righteous. 

When spring came and the lectures were over, a new 



MARRIAGE 333 

idea suddenly dawned upon me. If I were going to 
America to festive gatherings and to have some honours 
conferred, why leave the mother behind? Seventy-eight 
years is not old. She was born in India, had lived in Eng- 
land, and suppose anything did happen, why not sleep 
in America? — she would be just as near God there. The 
splendid Mauretania not only took us safely over, but 
gave me also that gift which I firmly beUeve God de- 
signed for me — a real partner to share in my joys and 
sorrows, to encourage and support in trouble and failures, 
to inspire and advise in a thousand ways, and in addition 
to bring into my distant field of work a personal comrade 
with the culture, wisdom, and enthusiasm of the Ameri- 
can life and the training of one of the very best of its 
Universities. 

We met on board the second day out. She was travel- 
ling with a Scotch banker of Chicago and his wife, Mr. 
W. R. Stirling, whose daughter was her best friend. They 
were returning from a motor tour through Europe and 
Algeria. The Mauretania takes only four and a half days 
in crossing, and never before did I realize the drawbacks 
of "hustle," and yet the extreme need of it on my part. 
The degrees of longitude slipped by so quickly that I 
felt personally aggrieved when one day we made over 
six hundred miles, and the captain told us in triumph that 
it was a new record. The ship seemed to be paying off 
some spite against me. My mother kept mostly to her 
cabin. Though constantly in to see her, I am afraid I did 
not unduly worry her to join me on the deck. When just 
on landing I told her that I had asked a fellow passenger 
to become my wife, I am sure had the opportunity arisen 
she would have tumbled down the Mauretania's stair- 
case. When she had the joy of meeting the girl, her equa- 
nimity was so far upset as to let an unaccustomed tear roll 



334 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

down her cheek. That, at least, is one of the tears which 
I have cost her which brings no regrets. For she confesses 
that it often puzzles her to which of our lives the event 
has meant most. 

The constant little activities of my life had so filled 
every horn* of time, and so engrossed my thoughts, that 
I had never thought to philosophize on the advisability 
of marriage, nor stopped to compare my hfe with those of 
my neighbors. There is no virtue in keeping the Ninth 
Commandment and not envying your neighbour's con- 
dition or goods when it never enters your head or heart 
to worry about them; and when you are getting what you 
care about no halo is due you for not falling victim to 
envy or jealousy of others. I have not been in the habit 
of praying for special personal providences like fine 
weather in my section of the earth, or for head wind for 
the schooners so as to give me a fair wind for my steamer, 
except so far as one prays for the recognition of God's 
good hand in everything. 

I can honestly protest that nothing in my life ever 
came more "out of the blue" than my marriage; and 
beyond that I am increasingly certain each day that it 
did come out of that blue where God dwells. 

I knew neither whence she came nor whither she was 
going. Indeed, I only found out when the proposition 
was really put that I did not even know her name — for 
it was down on the passenger list as one of the daughters 
of the friends with whom she was travelling. Fortu- 
nately it never entered my head that it mattered. For I 
doubt if I should have had the courage to question the 
chaperon, whose daughter she presumably was. It cer- 
tainly was a "poser" to be told, "But you don't even 
know my name." Had I not been a bit of a seaman, and 
often compelled on the spur of the moment to act first 



MARRIAGE 3S5 

and think afterwards, what the consequences might have 
been I cannot say. Fortunately, I remembered that it 
was not the matter at issue, and explained, without 
admitting the impeachment, that the only question that 
interested me in the least was what I hoped that it might 
become. Incidentally she mentioned that she had only 
once heard of me. It was the year previous when I had 
been speaking at Bryn Mawr and she had refused in no 
measured terms an invitation to attend, as sounding 
entirely too dull for her predilections. I have wondered 
whether this was not another "small providence." 

A pathological condition of one's internal workings is 
not unusual even in Britons who "go down to the sea 
in ships," but such genius as our family has displayed 
has, so history assures us, shone best on a quarter-deck; 
and on this occasion it pleased God ultimately to add 
another naval victory to our credit. It is generally ad- 
mitted that an abnormal mentality accompanies this 
not uncommon experience of human life, and I found my 
lack of appreciation of the rapid voyage paralleled by a 
wicked satisfaction that my mother preferred the brass 
four-poster, so thoughtfully provided for her by the 
Cunard Company, to the risks of the unsteady prome- 
nade deck. 

When the girl's way and mine parted in that last word 
in material jostlings, the custom-house shed in Man- 
hattan, after the liner arrived, I realized that it was 
rather an armistice than a permanent settlement which 
I had achieved. Though there was no father in the case, 
I learned that there was a mother and a home in Chicago. 
These were formidable strongholds for a homeless wan- 
derer to assault, but rendered doubly so by the fact that 
there was neither brother nor sister to leave behind to 
mitigate the possible vacancy. The "everlasting yea" 



336 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

not having been forthcoming, under the circumstances 
it was no easy task for me to keep faith with the many 
appointments to lecture on Labrador which had been 
made for me. The inexorable schedule kept me week 
after week in the East. Fortunately the generous hos- 
pitality of many old friends who wanted the pleasure of 
meeting my mother kept my mind somewhat occupied. 
But I confess at the back of it the forthcoming venture 
loomed up more and more momentous as the fateful day 
drew near for me to start for Chicago. 

This visit to my wife's beautiful country home among 
the trees on the bluff of Lake Michigan in Lake Forest 
was one long dream. My mother and I were now made 
acquainted with the family and friends of my fiancee. 
Her father, Colonel MacClanahan, a man of six feet 
five inches in height, had been Judge Advocate General 
on the Staff of Braxton Bragg and had fought under 
General Robert E. Lee. He was a Southerner. of Scotch 
extraction, having been born and brought up in Ten- 
nessee. A lawyer by training, after the war, when every- 
thing that belonged to him was destroyed in the "re- 
construction period," and being still a very young man, 
he had gone North to Chicago and begun life again at 
his profession. There he met and married, in 1884, Miss 
Rosamond Hill, who was born in Burlington, Vermont, 
but who, since childhood and the death of her parents, 
had lived with her married sister, Mrs. Charles Durand, 
of Chicago. The MacClanahans had two children — the 
boy, Kinloch, dying at an early age as the result of an 
accident. Colonel MacClanahan himself died a few 
months later, leaving a widow and one child, Anna Eliza- 
beth Caldwell MacClanahan. She and her mother had 
lived the greater part of the time with Mrs. Durand, who 
died something more than a year before our engagement. 



MARRIAGE 337 

The friends with whom my fiancee had been travel- 
ling were almost next-door neighbours in Lake Forest. 
They made my short stay doubly happy by endless 
kindnesses; and all through the years, till his death in 
1918, Mr. Stirling gave me not only a friendship which 
meant more to me than I can express, but his loving and 
invaluable aid and counsel in our work. 

In spite of my many years of sailor life, I found that 
I was expected among other things to ride a horse, my 
fiancee being devoted to that means of progression. The 
days when I had ridden to hounds in England as a boy 
in Cheshire stood me in some little stead, for like swim- 
ming, tennis, and other pastimes calling for coordination, 
riding is never quite forgotten. But remembering Mr. 
Winkle's experiences, it was not without some misgivings 
that I found a shellback like myself galloping behind my 
lady's charger. My last essay at horseback riding had 
been just eleven years previously in Iceland. Having to 
wait a few days at Reikkavik, I had hired a whole bevy 
of ponies with a guide to take myself and the young 
skipper of our vessel for a three days' ride to see the 
geysers. He had never been on the back of any animal 
before, and was nevertheless not surprised or daunted 
at falling off frequently, though an interlude of being 
dragged along with one foot in the stirrup over lava beds 
made no little impression upon him. Fodder of all kinds 
is very scarce in the volcanic tufa of which all that land 
consists, and any moment that one stopped was always 
devoted by our ponies to grubbing for blades of grass 
in the holes. On our return to the ship the crew could not 
help noticing that the skipper for many days ceased to 
patronize the lockers or any other seat, and soon they 
were rejoicing that for some reason he was unable to sit 
down at all. He explained it by saying that his ponies ate 



338 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

so mucli lava that it stuck out under their skins, and 
I myself recall feeling inclined to agree with him. 

The journey from Lake Forest to Labrador would have 
been a tedious one, but by good fortune a friend from 
New York had arranged to come and visit the coast in 
his steam yacht, the Enchantress, and was good enough 
to pick me up at Bras d'Or. Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, 
who had previously shown me much kindness, permitted 
us to rendezvous at his house, and for a second time I 
enjoyed seeing some of the experiments of his most ver- 
satile brain. His aeroplanes, telephones, and other in- 
ventions were all intensely interesting, but among his 
other lines of work the effort to develop a race of sheep, 
which had litters just as pigs do, interested me most. 

Francis Sayre, whom I had heard win the prize at 
Williams with his valedictory speech, was again to be 
my summer secretary. On our arrival at St. Anthony we 
found a great deal going on. The fame as a surgeon of my 
colleague, Dr. John Mason Little, had spread so widely 
that St. Anthony Hospital would no longer hold the 
patients who sought assistance at it. Fifty would arrive 
on a single mail boat. They were dumped down on the 
little wharf, having been landed in small punts from the 
steamer, as in those days we had no proper dock to 
which the boats could come. The little waiting-room in 
the hospital at night resembled nothing so much as a 
newly opened sardine tin; and to cater for the waiting 
patients was a Sisyphean task without the Hercules. 
Through the instrumentality of Dr. Little's sister a fund 
of ten thousand dollars was raised to double the size of 
the hospital, and the work of building was begun on 
my return. Although the capacity was greatly increased 
thereby we have really been unable ever to make our 
building what it ought to be to meet the problem. The 



MARRIAGE 339 

first part, constructed of green lumber hauled from the 
woods, and other wings added at different periods of 
growth, the endeavour to blast out suitable heating- 
plant accommodations — all this has left the hospital 
building more or less a thing of rags and patches, and 
most uneconomical to run. We are urgently in need of 
having it rebuilt entirely of either brick or stone, in order 
to resist the winter cold, to give more ejBSciency and 
comfort to patients and staff and to conserve our fuel, 
which is the most serious item of expense we have to 
meet. 

But at that time with all its capacity for service the 
new addition was rising, sounding yet one more note of 
praise in better ability to meet the demands upon us. 

And pari passu came the beautiful offer of my friend, 
Mr. Sayre, to double the size of our orphanage, putting 
up the new wing in memory of his father. This meant 
that instead of twenty we might now accommodate 
forty children at a pinch. Life is so short that it is the 
depths of pathos to be hampered in doing one's work for 
the lack of a few dollars. Of great interest to my fiancee 
and myself was the selection of a piece of ground adjoin- 
ing the Mission land, and the erection for ourselves of 
the home which we had planned and designed together 
before I had left Lake Forest. We chose some land up on 
the hillside and overlooking the sea and the harbour, 
where the view should be as comprehensive as possible. 
But we feared that even though our new house was very 
literally "founded upon a rock," the winds might some 
day remove it bodily from its abiding-place, and there- 
fore we riveted the structure with heavy iron bolts to 
the solid bedrock. 

One excitement of that season was Admiral Peary's 
return from the North Pole. We were cruising near Indian 



840 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

Harbour when some visitors came aboard to make use 
of our wireless telegraph, which at that time we had 
installed on board. It proved to be Mr, Harry Whitney. 
It was the first intimation that we had had that Peary 
was returning that year. Whitney had met Cook coming 
back from the polar sea on the west side of the Gulf, 
where he had disappeared about eighteen months pre- 
viously. I had met Dr. Cook several times myself, and 
indeed I had slept at his house in Brooklyn. He had 
visited Battle Harbour Hospital in 1893 when he was 
wrecked in the steamer in which he was conducting a 
party to visit Greenland. We had again seen him as he 
went North with Mr. Bradley in the yacht, and he had 
sent us back some Greenland dogs to mix their blood 
with our dogs, and so perhaps improve their breed and 
endurance. These, however, I had later felt it necessary 
to kill, for the Greenland dogs carry the dangerous tape- 
worm which is such a menace to man, and 9f which our 
Labrador dogs are entirely free so far. 

The picture of this meeting on the ice between Cook 
and Whitney gave us the impression of another Nansen 
and Jackson at Spitzbergen. Whitney had welcomed 
Cook warmly, had witnessed his troubles at Etah, and 
his departure by komatik, and had taken charge of his 
instruments and records to carry South with him when 
he came home. But his ship was delayed and delayed, 
and when Peary in the Roosevelt passed on his way 
South, fearing to be left another winter Whitney had 
accepted a passage on her at the cost of leaving Cook's 
material behind. He had met his own boat farther south 
and had transferred to her. He left the impression very 
firmly on all our minds that both he and Dr. Cook really 
believed that the latter had found the long-sought Pole. 

A little later, while cruising in thick weather in the 




COIVIMODORE PEARY ON HIS WAY BACK FROM THE POLE, 1909 



MARRIAGE 341 

Gulf of St. Lawrence, my wireless operator came in and 
said: "There can be no harm telling you, Doctor, that 
Peary is at Battle Harbour. He is wiring to Washington 
that he has found the Pole, and also he is asking his com- 
mittee if he may present the Mission with his superfluous 
supplies, or whether he is to sell them to you." Seeing that 
it is not easy to know whence wireless messages come if 
the sender does not own up to his whereabouts, I at once 
ordered him to wireless to Peary at Battle the simple 
words: "Give it to them, of course," and sign it "Wash- 
ington." I knew that the Commander would see the joke, 
and if the decision turned out later to be incorrect, it 
could easily be rectified by purchasing the goods. A tin 
of his brown bread now lies among my curios and one 
of his sledges is in my barn. 

On our arrival at Battle Harbour we found the Roose- 
velt lying at the wharf repainting and refitting. A whole 
host of newspaper men and other friends had come 
North to welcome the explorer home. Battle was quite 
a gay place; but it was living up to its name, for Peary 
not only claimed that he had found the Pole, but also 
that Cook had not; and he was realizing what a hard 
thing it is to prove a negative. We had a very delightful 
time with the party, and greatly enjoyed meeting all the 
members of the expedition. Among them was the ill- 
fated Borup, destined shortly to be drowned on a simple 
canoe trip, and the indomitable and athletic Macmillan 
who subsequently led the Crocker Land expedition, our 
own schooner George B. Cluett carrying them to Etah. 

My secretary, Mr. Sayre, was just about to leave for 
America, and at Peary's request he transferred to the 
Roosevelt with his typewriter, to help the Commander 
with a few of his many notes and records. I dare say that 
he got an inside view of the question then agitating the 



342 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

world from Washington to Copenhagen; but if so, he 
has remained forever silent about it. For our part we 
were glad that some one had found the Pole, for it has 
been a costly quest in both fine men and valuable time, 
energy, and money. It has caused lots of trouble and 
sorrow, and so far at least its practical issues have been 
few. 

Our wedding had been scheduled for November, and 
for the first time I had found a Labrador summer long. 
In the late fall I left for Chicago on a mission that had 
no flavour of the North Pole about it. We were married 
in Grace Episcopal Church, Chicago, on November 18, 
1909. Our wedding was followed by a visit to the Hot 
Springs of Virginia; and then "heigho," and a flight for 
the North. We sailed from St. John's, Newfoundland, in 
January. I had assured my wife, who is an excellent 
sailor, that she would scarcely notice the motion of the 
ship on the coastal trip of three hundred miles. Instead 
of five days, it took nine; and we steamed straight out 
of the Narrows at St. John's into a head gale and a 
blizzard of snow. The driving spray froze onto every 
thing till the ship was sugared like a vast Christmas 
cake. It made the home which we had built at St. 
Anthony appear perfectly dehghtful. My wife had had 
her furniture sent North during the summer, so that 
now the "Lares and Penates" with which she had been 
familiar from childhood seemed to extend a mute but 
hearty welcome to us from their new setting. 

We have three children, all born at St. Anthony. Our 
elder son, Wilfred Thomason, was born in the fall of 
1910; Kjnloch Pascoe in the fall of 1912, two years al- 
most to a day behind his brother; and lastly a daughter, 
Rosamond Loveday, who followed her brothers in 1917. 
In the case of the two latter children the honours of the 



MARRIAGE 343 

name were divided between both sides of the family, 
Kinloch and Rosamond being old family names on my 
wife's side, while, on the other hand, there have been 
Pascoe and Loveday Grenfells from time immemorial. 

Nearly ten years have now rolled away since our 
marriage. The puzzle to me is how I ever got along be- 
fore; and these last nine years have been so crowded with 
the activities and worries of the increasing cares of a 
growing work, that without the love and inspiration and 
intellectual help of a true comrade, I could never have 
stood up under them. Every side of Ufe is developed and 
broadened by companionship. I admit of no separation 
of life into "secular" and "rehgious." Religion, if it 
means anything, means the life and activities of our 
divine spirit on earth in relation to our Father in heaven. 
I am convinced from experience of the supreme value to 
that of a happy marriage, and that "team work" is 
God's plan for us on this earth. 



CHAPTER XXI 

NEW VENTURES 

No human life can be perfect, or even be lived without 
troubles. Clams have their troubles, I dare say. A queer 
sort of sinking feehng just like descending in a fast 
elevator comes over one, as if trouble and the abdominal 
viscera had a direct connection. Some one has said that 
it must be because that is where the average mind 
centres. Thus, when we lost the httle steamer Swallow 
which we were towing, and with it the evidence of a 
crime and the road to the prevention of its repetition, it 
absolutely sickened me for two or three days, or, to be 
more exact, during two or three nights. It was all quite 
unnecessary, for we can see now that the matter worked 
out for the best. The fact that troubles hurt most when 
one is at rest and one's mind unoccupied, and in the 
night when one's vitality is lowest, is a great comfort, 
because that shows how it is something physical that 
is at fault, and no physical troubles are of very great 
importance. 

The summer of 1910 brought me a fine crop of personal 
worries, and probably deservedly so, for no one should 
leave his business affairs too much to another, without 
guarantees, occasionally renewed, that all is well. Few 
professional men are good at business, and personally I 
have no liking for it. This, combined with an over-read- 
iness to accept as helpers men whose only qualifications 
have sometimes been of their own rating, was really 
spoiling for trouble — and mine came through the series 
of cooperative stores. 

To begin with, none of the stores were incorporated, and 



NEW VENTURES 345 

their liabilities were therefore unlimited. Though I had 
always felt it best not to accept a penny of interest, I 
had been obliged to loan them money, and their agent in 
St. John's, who was also mine, allowed them considerable 
latitude in credits. It was, indeed, a bolt from the blue 
when I was informed that the merchants in St. John's 
were owed by the stores the sum of twenty-five thousand 
dollars, and that I was being held responsible for every 
cent of it — because on the strength of their faith in me, 
and their knowledge that I was interested in the stores, 
having brought them into being, they had been willing 
to let the credits mount up. Even then I still had all my 
work to carry on and little time to devote to money af- 
fairs. Had I accepted, on first entering the Mission, the 
salary offered me, which was that of my predecessor, I 
should have been able to meet these liabilities, and very 
gladly indeed would I have done so. As it was I had to 
find some way out. All the merchants interested were told 
of the facts, and asked to meet me at the office of one of 
them, go over the accounts with my agent, and try and 
find a plan to settle. One can have little heart in his 
work if he feels every one who looks at him really thinks 
that he is a defaulter. The outcome of the inquiry re- 
vealed that if the agent could not show which store owed 
each debt, neither could the merchants; some had made 
out their bills to separate stores, some all to one store, and 
some in a general way to myself, though not one single 
penny of the debt was a personal one of my own. 

The next discovery was that the manager of the St. 
Anthony store, who had been my summer secretary be- 
fore, and was an exceedingly pious man — whose great 
zeal for cottage prayer meetings, and that form of relig- 
ious work, had led me to think far too highly of him — 
had neglected his books. He had given credit to every one 



346 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

who came along (though it was a cardinal statute under 
his rules that no credit was to be allowed except at his 
own personal risk). The St. John's agent claimed that he 
had made a loss of twelve thousand dollars in a little over 
a year, in which he professed to have been able to pay 
ten per cent to shareholders and put by three hundred 
dollars to reserve. Besides this, the new local store secre- 
tary had mixed up affairs by both ordering supplies direct 
from Canada and sending produce there, which the St. 
John's agent claimed were owed to the merchants in that 
city. 

These two men, instead of pulling together, were, I 
found, bitter enemies; and it looked as if the whole pack 
of cards were tumbling about my ears. I cashed every 
available personal asset which I could. The beautiful 
schooner, Emma E. White, also a personal possession, 
arrived in St. John's while we were there with a full load 
of lumber, but it and she sailed straight into the melting- 
pot. The merchants, with one exception, were all as good 
about the matter as men can be. They were perfectly 
satisfied when they realized that I meant facing the debt 
squarely. One was nasty about it, saying that he would 
not wait — and oddly enough in ordinary life he was a 
man whom one would not expect to be ungenerous, for he 
too was a religious man. Whether he gained by it or not 
it is hard to say. He was paid first, anyhow. The standard 
of what is really remunerative in life is differently graded. 
The stores have dealt with him since, and his prices are 
fair and honest; but he was the only one among some 
twenty who even appeared to kick a man when he was 
down. I have nothing but gratitude to all the rest. 

I should add that the incident was not the fault of the 
people of the coast. Often I had been warned by the mer- 
chants that the cooperative stores would fail and that the 



NEW VENTURES 847 

people would rob me. It is true that there was trouble 
over the badly kept books, and a number of the fishermen 
disclaimed their debts charged against them; but with 
one exception no one came and said that he had had 
things which were not noted on the bills. I am confident, 
however, that they did not go back on me willingly, and 
when my merchant friends said, "I told you so," I hon- 
estly was able to state that it was the management, not 
the people or the system, that was at fault. Indeed, sub- 
sequent events have proved this. For five of the stores 
still run, and run splendidly, and pay handsomer divi- 
dends by far than any investment our people could pos- 
sibly make elsewhere. 

With the sale of a few investments and some other 
available property, the liability was so far reduced that, 
with what the stores paid, only one merchant was not 
fully indemnified, and he generously told me not to 
worry about the balance. 

This same year, on the other hand, one of our most 
forward steps, so far as the Mission was concerned, was 
taken, through the generosity of the late Mr. George B. 
Cluett, of Troy, New York. He had built specially for our 
work a magnificent three-masted schooner, fitted with 
the best of gear including a motor launch. She was con- 
structed of three-inch oak plank, sheathed with hardwood 
for work in the ice-fields. She was also fitted with an 
eighty horse-power Wolverine engine. The bronze tablet 
in her bore the inscription, "This vessel with full equip- 
ment was presented to Wilfred T. Grenfell by George B. 
Cluett." He had previously asked me if I would like any 
words from the Bible on the plate, and I had suggested, 
"The sea is His and He made it." The designer unfortu- 
nately put the text after the inscription; so that I have 
been frequently asked why and how I came to make it. 



348 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

seeing that it is believed by all good Christians that in 
heaven "there shall be no more sea." 

To help out with the expenses of getting her running, 
our loved friend from Chicago, Mr. W. R. Stirling, agreed 
to come North on the schooner the first season, bringing 
his two daughters and three friends. Even though he was 
renting her for a yachting trip, he offered to bring all the 
cargo free and make the Mission stations his ports of call. 

Mr. Cluett's idea was that, as we had big expenses 
carrying endless freight so far North, and as it got so 
broken and often lost in transit, and greatly damaged in 
the many changes involved from rail to steamer, and 
from steamer to steamer, if she carried our freight in sum- 
mer, she could in winter earn enough to make it all free, 
and possibly provide a sinking fund for herself as well. 
There was also good accommodation in her for doctors, 
nurses, students, etc., who every summer come from the 
South to help in various ways in the work of the Mission. 

All our freight that year arrived promptly and in good 
condition, which had never happened before. Later the 
vessel was chartered to go to Greenland by the Smith- 
sonian. On this occasion her engine, never satisfactory, 
gave out entirely, which so delayed her that she got 
frozen in near Etah and was held up a whole twelve- 
month. Meanwhile the war had broken out, and when 
she at last sailed into Boston, we were able to sell her, 
by the generous permission of Mrs. Cluett, and use the 
money to purchase the George B. Cluett II. 

Illustrating the advantage of getting our freight direct, 
among the many instances which have occurred, that 
of the lost searchlight for the Strathcona comes to my 
mind. As she had often on dark nights to come to anchor 
among vessels, and to nose her way into unlit harbours, 
some friends, through the Professor of Geology at Har- 



NEW VENTURES 849 

vard, who had himself cruised all along our coast in a 
schooner, presented me with a searchlight for the hos- 
pital ship and despatched it via Sydney — the normal 
freight route. Month after month went by, and it never 
appeared. Year followed year, and still we searched for 
that searchlight. At length, after two and a half years, 
it suddenly arrived, having been "delayed on the way." 
Had it been provisions or clothing or drugs, or almost 
anything else, of course, it would have been useless. It 
has proved to us one of the almost de luxe additions to a 
Mission steamer. 

For a long time I had felt the need of some place in St. 
John's where work for fishermen could be carried on, and 
which could be also utilized as a place of safety for girls 
coming to that city from other parts of the island. My 
attention was called one day to the fact that liquor was 
being sent to people in the outports C.O.D., by a barrel 
of flour which was being lowered over the side of the mail 
steamer rather too quickly on to the ice. As the hard 
bump came, the flour in the barrel jingled loudly and 
leaked rum profusely from the compound fracture. When 
our sober outport people went to St. John's, as they must 
every year for supplies, they had only the uncomfortable 
schooner or the street in which to pass the time. There 
is no "Foyer des Pecheurs"; no one wanted fishermen 
straight from a fishing schooner in the home; and in those 
days there were no Camp Community Clubs. As one man 
said, "It is easy for the parson to tell us to be good, but 
it is hard on a wet cold night to be good in the open 
street" and nowhere to go, and harder still if you have 
to seek shelter in a brightly lighted room, where music 
was being played. The boarding-houses for the fishermen, 
where thousands of our young men flocked in the spring 



350 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

to ti:y for a berth in the seal fishery, were ridiculous, not 
to say calamitous. Lastly, unsophisticated girls coming 
from the outports ran terrible risks in the city, having no 
friends to direct and assist them; and the Institute which 
we had in mind was to comprise also a girls' lodging de- 
partment. No provision was made for the accommodation 
of crews wrecked by accident, and our Institute has al- 
ready proved invaluable to many in such plights. 

Seeing the hundreds of craft and the thousands of fish- 
ermen, and the capital and interest vested against us as 
prohibitionists, it would have been obviously futile to 
put up a second-rate affair in a back street. It would only 
be sneered at as a proselytizing job. I had almost forgot- 
ten to mention that there was already an Old Seamen's 
Home, but it had gradually become a roost for boozers, 
and when with the trustees we made an inspection of it, 
it proved to be only worthy of immediate closure. This 
was promptly done, and the money realized from the sale 
of it, some ten thousand dollars, was kindly donated to 
the fund for our new building. 

After a few years of my collecting funds spasmodically, 
a number of our local friends got "cold feet." Reports 
started, not circulated by well-wishers, that it was all a 
piece of personal vanity, that no such thing was needed, 
and if built would prove a white elephant, to support 
which I would be going round with my hat in my hand 
worrying the merchants. We had at that time some 
ninety thousand dollars in hand. I laid the whole story 
before the Governor, Sir Ralph Williams, a man by no 
means prejudiced in favour of prohibition. He was, how- 
ever, one who knew what the city needed, and realized 
that it was a big lack and required a big remedy. 

A letter which I published in all the St. John's papers, 
describing my passing fifteen drunken men on the streets 



NEW VENTURES S51 

before morning service on Christmas Day, brought forth 
angry denials of the actual facts, and my statement of 
the number of saloons in the city was also contradicted. 
But a saloon is not necessarily a place licensed by the 
Government or city to make men drunk — for the ma- 
jority are unlicensed, and a couple of experiences which 
my men had in looking for sailors who had shipped, been 
given advances, and gone off and got drunk in shebeens, 
proved the number to be very much higher than even I 
had estimated it. 

Sir Ralph thought the matter over and called a public 
meeting in the ballroom of Government House. He had a 
remarkable personality and no fear of conventions. After 
thoroughly endorsing the plan for the Institute, and the 
need for it, he asked each of the many citizens who had 
responded to his invitation, "Will you personally stand 
by the larger scheme of a two hundred thousand dollar 
building, or will you stand by the sixty thousand dollar 
building with the thirty thousand dollar endowment 
fund, or will you do nothing at all.^*" It was proven that 
when it came to the point of going on record, practically 
all who really took the slightest interest in the matter 
were in favom* of the larger plan — if I would undertake 
to raise the money. My own view, since more than justi- 
fied, was that only so large a building could ever hope to 
meet the requirements and only such a comprehensive 
institution could expect to carry its own expenses. I pre- 
ferred refunding the ninety thousand dollars to the vari- 
ous donors and dropping the whole business to embarking 
on the smaller scheme. 

That meeting did a world of good. It cleared the at- 
mosphere; and it is only fresh air which most of these 
things really need — just as does a consumptive patient. 
The plan was now on the shoulders of the citizens; it was 



352 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

no longer one man's hobby. Enemies, like the Scribes and 
Pharisees of old, knew better than to tackle a crowd, and 
with the splendid gift of Messrs. Bowring Brothers of a 
site on the water-side on the main street, costing thirteen 
thousand dollars, and those of Job Brothers, Harvey and 
Company, and Macpherson Brothers of twenty-five hun- 
dred dollars each, the fund grew like Jonah's gourd; and 
in the year of 1911, with approximately one hundred and 
seventy-five thousand dollars in hand, we actually came 
to the time for laying the foundation stone. The hostility 
of enemies was not over. Such an institute is a fighting 
force, and involves contest and therefore enemies. So we 
decided to make this occasion as much of an event as 
we could. Through friends in England we obtained the 
promise of King George V that if we connected the foun- 
dation stone with Buckingham Palace by wire, he would, 
after the ceremony in Westminster Abbey on his Corona- 
tion Day, press a button at three in the afternoon and 
lay the stone across the Atlantic. The good services of 
friends in the Anglo-American Telegraph Company did 
the rest. 

On the fateful day His Excellency the Governor came 
down and made an appropriate and patriotic speech. 
Owing to the difference in time of about three hours and 
twenty minutes, it was shortly before twelve o'clock with 
us. The noonday gun signal from the Narrows was fired 
during His Excellency's address. Then followed a prayer 
of invocation by His Lordship the Bishop of Newfound- 
land and Bermuda — and then, a dead silence and pause. 
Every one was waiting for our newly crowned King to 
put that stone into place. Only a moment had passed, the 
Governor had just said, "We will wait for the King," 
when "Bing, bang, bang," went the gong signifying that 
His Majesty was at the other end of the wire. Up went 



NEW VENTURES S53 

the national flag, and slowly but surely the great stone 
began to move. A storm of cheering greeted the successful 
effort; and all that was left for our enemies to say was, 
"It was a fake." They claimed that we had laid the stone 
ourselves. Nor might they have been so far off the mark 
as they supposed, for we had a man with a knife under 
that platform to make that stone come down if anything 
happened that the wire device did not work. You cannot 
go back on your King whatever else you do, and to per- 
mit any grounds to exist for supposing that he had not 
been punctual was unthinkable. But fortunately for all 
concerned our subterfuge was unnecessary. 

I have omitted so far to state one of the main reasons 
why the Institute to our mind was so desirable. That was 
because no undenominational work is carried on practi- 
cally in the whole country. Religion is tied up in bundles 
and its energies used to divide rather than to unite men. 
No Y.M.C.A. or Y.W.C.A. could exist in the Colony for 
that reason. The Boys' Brigade which we had originally 
started could not continue, any more than the Boy Scouts 
can now. Catholic Cadets, Church Lads Brigade, Metho- 
dist Guards, Presbyterian Highland Brigade — are all 
names symbolic of the dividing influences of "religion." 
In no place of which I know would a Y.M.C.A. be more 
desirable; and a large meeting held in the Institute this 
present spring decided that in no town anywhere was a 
Y.W.C.A. more needed. 

In another place in this book I have spoken of the 
problem of alcohol and fishermen. A man does not need 
alcohol and is far better without it. A man who sees two 
lights when there is only one is not wanted at the wheel. 
The people who sell alcohol know that just as well as we 
do, but for paltry gain they are unpatriotic enough to 
barter their earthly country as well as their heavenly one. 



354 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

and to be branded with the knowledge that they are 
cursmg men and ruming families. The filibuster de- 
serves the name no less because he does his destructive 
work secretly and slowly, and wears the emblems of re- 
spectability instead of operating in the open with "Long 
Toms" under the shadow of the ** JoUy Roger.'* 

As a magistrate on this coast I have been obliged more 
than once to act as a pohceman, and though one hated 
the ill-feeling which it stored up, and did not enjoy the 
evil-speaking to which it gave rise, I considered that it 
was really only like lancing a concealed infection — the 
ill-feeling and evil-speaking were better tapped and let 
out. 

On one occasion at one of our Labrador hospitals a 
beardless youth, one of the Methodist candidates for col- 
lege who every year are sent down to look after the inter- 
ests of that denomination on our North coast, came to in- 
form me that the only other magistrate on the coast, the 
pillar of the Church of England, and shortly to be our 
stipendiary, who had many poHtical friends of great in- 
fluence in St. John's, was keeping a "bhnd tiger," while 
many even of his own people were being ruined body and 
soul by this temptation under their noses. 

"Well," I repHed, "if you will come and give the 
evidence which will lead to conviction, I will do the 
rest." 

"I certainly will," he answered. And he did. So we got 
the little Strathcona under way, and after steaming some 
fifteen miles dropped into a small cove a mile or two 
from the place where our friend Hved. In the King's name 
we constrained a couple of men to come along as special 
constables. Our visit was an unusual one. To divert sus- 
picion we dressed our ship in bimting as if we were coming 
for a marriage hcense. When we anchored as near his 



NEW VENTURES S55 

stage as possible, we dropped our jolly-boat and made 
for tbe store. The door was, however, locked and our 
friend nowhere to be seen. "He is in the store" was the 
reply of his wife to our query. We knew then that there 
was no time to be lost, and even while we battered at the 
door, we could hear a suspicious gurgle and smell a curious 
odour. Rum was trickling down through the cracks of the 
store floor on to the astonished winkles below. But the 
door quickly gave way before our overtures, and we 
caught the magistrate ^agrrante delicto. We were threat- 
ened with all sorts of big folk in St. John's; but we held 
the trial on board straightaway just the same. When 
court was called, the defendant demanded the name of 
the prosecutor — and to his infinite surprise out popped 
the youthful aspirant to the Methodist ministry. When 
he learned that haK of his fine of seventy dollars had to 
be paid to the prosecutor and would be applied toward 
the building of a Methodist school, his temper completely 
ran away with him; and we had to threaten auction on 
the spot of the goods in the store before we could collect 
the money. We left him breathing out threatenings and 
slaughter. 

Only once was I really caught. Two mothers in a little 
village had appealed to me because liquor was being sold 
to their boys who had no money, whUe people were com- 
plaining simultaneously that fish was being stolen from 
their stages. No one would tell who was selling it, so we 
had a systematic search made of all the houses, and the 
guUty man was convicted on evidence discovered under 
the floor of his sitting-room. The fine of fifty dollars he 
paid without a murmur and it was promptly divided be- 
tween the Government and the prosecutor. It so hap- 
pened, however, that he had obtained from us for a close 
relative a new artificial leg, and there was fifty dollars 



356 



A LABRADOR DOCTOR 



owing to us on it. Unknown to us at the time, he had col- 
lected that fifty dollars from the said relative and with it 
paid his fine. To this day we never got a cent for our leg, 
and so really fined ourselves. Nor could we with any 
propriety distrain on one of a poor woman's legs! 



CHAPTER XXII 

PROBLEMS ON LAND AND SEA 

The year 1912 was a busy season. The New Year found 
us in Florida with the donor of the ship George B. Cluett, 
consulting him concerning its progress and future. Lec- 
turing then as we went west we reached Colorado, visited 
the Grand Canyon, and lectured all along the Pacific 
Coast from San Diego to Victoria — finding many old 
friends and making many new ones. 

At Oaklands I was asked to deliver the Earle Lectures 
at the University of California; and I also spoke to an 
immense audience ia the open Greek theatre — a most 
novel experience. At Santa Barbara a special meeting had 
been arranged by our good friend Dr. Joseph Andrews, 
who every year travels all the way from California to St. 
Anthony at his own expense to afiford the fishermen of 
our Northern waters the inestimable benefits of his skill 
as a consulting eye specialist. Many blind he has restored 
to sight who would otherwise be encumbrances to them- 
selves and others. Only last year I received the following 
communication from an eager would-be patient: "Dear 
Dr. Grandfield, when is the eye spider coming to St. 
Anthony? I needs to see him bad." 

While we were at Tacoma a visitor, saying that he was 
an old acquaintance of mine, sent up his card to our room. 
He had driven over in a fine motor car, and was a great, 
broad-shouldered man. The grip which he gave me as- 
sured me that he had been brought up hard, but I utterly 
failed to place him. With a broad grin he relieved the sit- 
uation by saying: "The last time that we met, Doctor, 
was on the deck of a fishing vessel in the North Sea. I was 



358 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

second hand aboard, sailing out from Grimsby." The 
tough surroundings of that life were such a contrast to his 
present apparently ample means that I could only say, 
"How on earth did you get out here?" 

"A friend," said he, "gave me a little book entitled 
*One Hundred Ways to Rise in the World.' The first 
ninety-nine were no good to me, but the hundredth said, 
*Go to Western America,' so I just cleared out and came 
here." He was exceedingly kind to us, even accompanying 
us to Seattle, and his story of pluck and enterprise was a 
splendid stimulus. 

Six weeks of lecturing nearly every single night in a 
new town in Canada gave me a real vision of Canadian 
Western life, and a sincere admiration for its people who 
are making a nation of which the world is proud. 

In April a large meeting was held in New York to re- 
organize the management of the Mission. The English 
Royal National Missi@n to Deep-Sea Fishermien was no 
longer able or willing to finance, much less to direct, 
affairs which had gone beyond their control, and was hop- 
ing to arrange an organization of an international char- 
acter to which all the affairs of the enterprise could be 
turned over. This organization was formed at the house 
of Mr. Eugene Delano, the head of Brown Brothers, 
bankers, whose lifelong help has meant for Labrador 
more than he will ever know. 

The International Grenfell Association was incorpo- 
rated to comprise the Labrador branches of the Royal 
National Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen as its English 
component, the Grenfell Association of America and the 
New England Grenfell Association to represent the Amer- 
ican interests, the Labrador Medical Mission as the Cana- 
dian name for its Society, and the Newfoundland Gren- 
fell Association for the Newfoundland branch. Each one 



PROBLEMS ON LAND AND SEA 359 

of these component societies has two members in the 
Central Council, and together they make up the Board 
of Directors of the International Grenfell Association. 
These directors ever since have generously been giving 
their time and interest in the wise and efficient adminis- 
tration of this work. To these unselfish men Labrador 
and northern Newfoundland, as well as I, owe a greater 
debt than can ever be repaid. 

On the 1st of May,! was due to speak at the annual 
meeting of the English Mission in London, and the swift 
heels of the Mauretania once more stood us in good stead; 
for we reached England the evening before May 1, ar- 
rived in London at 2 a.m., and I spoke three times that 
day. After a day or so at my old home with my mother we 
ran about in a Ford car for a fortnight, lecturing every 
evening. The Uttle motor saved endless energy otherwise 
lost in endeavouring to make connections, and gave us 
the opportunity to see numbers of old friends whom we 
must otherwise have missed. One day we would be at a 
meeting of miners at Redmuth in Cornwall, on another 
at Harrow or Bugby Schools. At the latter, an old college 
friend, who is now head master there, gave us a royal 
welcome. During the last fortnight at home a splendid 
chance was afforded me to visit daily the clinics of an old 
friend. Sir Robert Jones, England's famous orthopedic 
surgeon. He is one of the most wonderful and practical 
of men, and he opened our eyes to the possibility of med- 
ical mission work in the very heart of England — for if 
ever there was an apostle of hope for the deformed and 
paralyzed he certainly is the man. His Sunday morning 
free clinics crowded even the street opposite his office 
door with waiting patients of the poorest class. Equally 
beneficent also is the large and wonderful hospital built 
specially for derehct children on the heather-covered hills 



S60 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

just above our home in Cheshire. But most unique of all 
was his Basschurch Hospital, constructed mostly of sheet 
iron, standing in the middle of a field in the country forty 
miles away from Liverpool. Every second Sunday, Sir 
Robert Jones used to motor over there and operate "in 
the field." No expedition have I ever enjoyed better in 
my life than when he was good enough to pick us up on 
his way, and we saw him tackle the motley collection of 
halt and lame, whom the lady of the hospital, herself a 
marvellous testimony to his skill, collected from the 
neighbouring town slums between his visits. The hospital 
was the nearest thing I know to our little "one-horse 
shows" scattered along the Labrador coast; and there 
was a homing feeling in one's heart all the time at these 
open-air clinics. 

As commander-in-chief of the orthopedic work of the 
British Army in the war, I am certain that Colonel Sir 
Robert Jones has found the experiences of his improvised 
clinics among the most valuable assets he could have had. 
One day he has promised that he will bring his magic 
wand to Labrador; for he is a sportsman in the best sense 
of the word as well as a healer of limbs. 

The quickest way back to St. John's being via Canada, 
we returned by the Allan Line, and lectured in the 
Maritime Provinces as we passed North. 

It would appear that one must possess an insatiable 
love of lecturing. As a matter of fact, nothing is farther 
from the truth. But the brevity of life is an insistent fact 
in our existence, and the inability to do good work for 
lack of help that is so gladly given when the reasonable- 
ness of the expenditure is presented, makes one feel 
guilty if an evening is spent doing nothing. The lecturing 
is by far the most uncongenial task which I have been 
called upon to do in life, but in a mission like ours, which 



PROBLEMS ON LAND AND SEA S61 

is not under any special church, the funds must be raised 
to a very great extent by voluntary donations, and in 
order to secure these friends must be kept informed of 
the progress of the work which their gifts are making 
possible. 

For the first seven years of my work I never spent the 
winters in the country — nor was it my intention ever to 
do so. Besides the general direction of the whole, my work 
as superintendent has meant the raising of the necessary 
funds, and my special charge on the actual coast has been 
the hospital ship Strathcona. Naturally, owing to our 
frozen winter sea this is only possible during open water. 
Since 1902 it has been my custom when possible to spend 
every other winter as well as every summer in the North. 
The actual work and life there is a tremendous rest after 
the nervous and physical tax of a lecture tour. At first 
I used to wonder at the lack of imagination in those who 
would greet me, after some long, wearisome hours on the 
train or in a crowded lecture hall, with "What a lovely 
holiday you are having!" Now this oft-repeated com- 
ment only amuses me. 

It was just after the first of June when again we found 
ourselves heading North for St. Anthony, only once more 
to be caught in the jaws of winter. For the heavy Arctic 
ice blockaded the whole of the eastern French shore, and 
we had to be content to be held up in small ice-bound 
harbours as we pushed along through the inner edge of 
the floe, till strong westerly winds cleared the way. 

Having reached St. Anthony and looked into matters 
there, we once again ran south to St. John's to inspect the 
new venture of the Institute. To help out expenses we 
towed for the whole four hundred miles a schooner which 
had been wrecked on the Labrador coast, having run on 
the rocks, and knocked a hole in her bottom. She had a 



362 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

number of sacks of "hard bread" on board. These had 
been thrown into the breach and planking nailed on over 
them. The bread had swelled up between the two casings 
and become so hard again that the vessel leaked but lit- 
tle; and though the continual dirge of the pumps was 
somewhat dismal as we journeyed, we had no reason to 
fear that she would go to the bottom. 

Flour resists water in a marvellous way. On one occa- 
sion our own vessel in the North Sea was run into by an- 
other. The latter's cutwater went through her side and 
deck almost to the combing of the hatch, and the water 
began to pour in. By immediately putting the vessel on 
the other tack, the rent was largely lifted out of water. 
A heavy topsail was hastily thrown over her side, and 
eventually hauled under the keel — the inrushing water 
keeping it there. Then sacks of flour were rammed into 
the breach. The ship in this condition, favoured by the 
wind which enabled her to continue on that tack, reached 
home, two hundred miles distant, with her hand-pumps 
keeping her comparatively free, though there was the 
greatest difficulty to keep her afloat directly she was 
towed into the harboiu* and lay at the wharf. 

On another occasion when a Canadian steamer, loaded 
with provisions, ran into a cliff two hundred feet high in 
a fog on the northeast end of Belle Isle, and became a 
total wreck, her flour floated all up and down the Straits. 
I remember picking up a sack that had certainly been in 
the water some weeks; and yet only about a quarter of 
an inch of outside layer was even wet. 

The opening of the Institute was a great day. Dr. 
Henry van Dyke had come all the way from New York 
to give an address. Sir William Archibald, chairman of 
the Royal National Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen, had 
travelled from England to bring a blessing from the old 



PROBLEMS ON LAND AND SEA 363 

home country; and the merchants and friends in St. John's 
did their best to make it a red-letter day. Sir Edward 
Morris, the Prime Minister, and other poHticians, the 
Mayor and civic functionaries were all good enough to 
come and add their quota to the launching of the new 
ship. There were still pessimistic and croaking individuals, 
however, as well as joyful hearts, when a few days later 
we again ran North. 

We started almost immediately for our Straits trip 
after reaching St. Anthony. On our way east from Har- 
rington, our most westerly hospital, commenced in 1907, 
a telegram summoning me immediately to St. John's 
dropped upon me like a bolt from the blue. Without a 
moment's delay we headed yet again South, full of anx- 
iety as to what could be the cause of this message. 

On arrival there we found that trouble had arisen con- 
cerniQg the funds of the Institute and a prosecution was 
to follow. It was the worst time of my life. Things were 
readjusted; the money was refunded, punishment meted 
out — but such damage is not made right by reconstruc- 
tion. It left permanent scars and made the end of an other- 
wise splendid year anxious and sorrowful. 

The work on East Labrador was also extended this year. 
While walking down the street in New York with a young 
doctor friend who had once wintered with me, we met a 
colleague of his at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. 
In the conversation it was suggested that he should 
spend a summer in Labrador, and we would place him 
in a virgin field. As a result Dr. Wiltsie, now in China, 
came North, started in work with a little school, club, and 
dispensary, at a place called Spotted Islands, in a very 
barren group of islands about a hundred miles north of 
the Straits of Belle Isle. His work became permanent as 
the summer mission of the Y.M.C.A. of the College, which 



364 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

organization now carries all its expenses. It has a dwelling- 
house, school, dispensary, small operating room, and ac- 
commodation for a couple of patients, all under one roof, 
and owns a fast motor boat called the P. and S., which has 
made itself known as an angel of mercy, every summer 
since, over a hundred miles of coast and islands. It is only 
a summer work, and is mainly among a schooner popu- 
lation; but as a testimonial to the value of pluck and 
unselfishness I know of no better example. 

Among other ways to help Labrador we had always 
tried to induce tourists and yachtsmen to come and visit 
us. Mr. Rainey's Surf, Mr. McCready's Enchantress, Dr. 
Stimson's Fleur de Lys, Mr. Arthur James's Aloha, and 
a few other yachts had come part of the way, but no one 
had yet explored north of Hopedale — the latitude at 
which the fine Northern scenery may be said only to be- 
gin. The large power vessels or even the best type of yacht 
are by no means necessary for a visit to Labrador. For 
the innumerable fjords and islands make it much more 
interesting to be in a smaller boat, which allows one to go 
freely in and out of new by-ways, even when the survey 
is only that of your own making. The most sporting visits 
of that kind have been the honeymoon of a Philadelphia 
friend, who, with his wife, one man, and a canoe, went 
by river to James's Bay, then via Hudson Bay to Rich- 
mond Gulf, then by portage and river to Ungava Bay, 
and thence home by way of the Hudson Bay Company's 
steamer; the canoe trips of Mr. Kennedy all along the 
outside eastern coast, and those of Mr. William Cabot 
on the section of the northeastern coast between Hope- 
dale and Nain. In this year of 1912 a new little yacht 
appeared, the Sybil, brought down from Boston by her 
owner, Mr. George Williams. I had promised that if ever 
he would sail down to see us in his own boat, we would 



PROBLEMS ON LAND AND SEA 365 

escort him up a salmon river for a fishing expedition — a 
luxury which we certainly never anticipated would ma- 
terialize. But on arriving North, there was the beautiful 
little boat; and in it we sailed up into the fine salmon 
stream in the bay close to the hospital. Subsequently Mr. 
Williams came year after year, pushing farther North each 
time. The Sybil he eventually gave to the Mission, and 
built a large boat, the Jeanette, in which I had the pleas- 
ure later of exploring with him and roughly charting three 
hitherto unrecorded bays. 

One unusual feature of our magisterial work in 1912 
was the settlement of a fisherman's strike "down North." 
It would at first seem difficult to understand how fisher- 
men could engineer a strike, they are so good-natured and 
so long-suffering. But this time it was over the price of 
fish, naturally a matter of immense importance to the 
catcher. The planters, or men who give advances to come 
and fish around the mouth of Hamilton Inlet, were to 
ship their fish on a steamer coming direct from England 
and returning direct — thus saving delay and very great 
expense. But the price did not please the men, and they 
knew if they once put the fish on board at $3.50 per quin- 
tal, the amount offered, they would never recover the 
$5, which was the price for which fish was selling in St. 
John's that year. The more masterful men decided that 
not only would they not put the fish on board till they 
had cash orders or Revillon agreements for their price, 
but they would not allow any of the weaker brethren to 
do so either. There were but few hard words and no vio- 
lent deeds, but when one blackleg was seen to go along- 
side the waiting steamer, which was costing a hundred 
dollars a day to the fish- carrying merchant, a crowd of 
boats dashed out from creeks and corners and pounced 
like a vulture on the big boat, fat with a fine load of fish. 



S66 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

and not only towed her away and tied her up, but hauled 
her out of the water with the cargo and all in her, and 
dragged her so far up the side of a steep hill that the 
owner was utterly unable without assistanqe to get her 
down again. 

Each day we had a conference with one side or the 
other, the Government having asked us to remain and 
see things settled. While each side was fencing for an ad- 
vantage, a good-sized schooner sailed into the harbour, 
brought up alongside the steamer, and was seen to begin 
unloading dry fish. A dash was made for her by the boats 
as before; only this time it was the attack of Lilliputians 
on Gulliver. We on the shore could not help laughing 
heartily when shortly we saw a string of over a dozen fish- 
ing boats harnessed tandem in one long line towing the 
interloper — as they had the blackleg — away up the in- 
let where they moored and guarded her. It appeared that 
the buyer had sent her to a far-off anchorage, and un- 
known to the strikers had had fish put into her there. 
The steamer might have followed and got away with the 
ruse. But the skipper underestimated the enemy, always 
a fatal mistake, and lost out. 

The agreement made a day or so later was perfectly 
peaceful, and perfectly satisfactory to both sides, for the 
fish turned out a good price, and the buyer did not lose 
anything on the transaction but the demurrage on his 
steamer and a little kudos, which I must confess he took 
in very good spirit. Even if he did have a grasping side 
to his character, he was fortunate in possessing a sense 
of humour also. 

The fall brought yet another call to go South to St. 
John's, and once more in the little Strath cona we ploughed 
our way through the long miles to the southward. This 
time it was for the reorganization of the Institute govern- 



PROBLEMS ON LAND AND SEA 367 

ment, to form a council and to install the new manager 
from England. This was Mr. Walter Jones, a man whose 
wide experience among naval *' Jackies" had been gained 
in a large institute of much the same kind. This gave him 
the credentials which we needed, for he had made it not 
only a social but an economic success. He has been 
much sought by the various churches in St. John's as a 
speaker to men, and his Sunday evening lantern services 
and lectures at the Institute are a real source of uplift 
and help to men of every religious denomination. 

The fall of the year was very busy. Dr. Seymour Arm- 
strong, formerly surgical registrar at the Charing Cross 
Hospital in London, an able surgeon, and a man of inde- 
pendent means, joined me for that winter at St. Anthony. 
He had already wintered twice at our Labrador hospitals, 
and was fully expecting to give us much further help, but 
two years later the great war found him at the front, 
where he gladly laid down his life for his country. 

One sick call that winter lives in my memory. It was a 
case where a nurse was really more needed than a doctor. 
The way was long, the wind was cold, and the snow hap- 
pened to be particularly deep. One of the nurses, however, 
volunteered for the journey, and I arranged to carry her 
on a second komatik, while my driver broke the path with 
our impedimenta. Things did not go altogether well. 
Since I have enjoyed the luxury of a driver, or a "carter" 
as we call them, my cunning in wriggling a komatik at 
full speed down steep moimtain-sides through trees has 
somewhat waned. Comparatively early in the day we 
looped the loop — and we were both heavy weights. It 
was nearly dark when we reached the last lap — an enor- 
mous bay with a direct run of seven miles over sea ice. We 
should probably have made it all right, but suddenly 
fog drifted in from the Straits of Belle Isle, and steering 



S68 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

with a small compass and no binnacle, while attending 
to hauling a heavy nurse over hummocky sea ice in the 
dark, satisfied all my ambition for problems. At length 
the nature of the ice indicated that we were approaching 
either land or the sea edge. We stopped the komatiks, 
and it fell to my lot to go ahead and explore. Finding 
nothing I called to the driver, and his voice returned out 
of the fog right ahead of me, and almost in my ear. I had 
told them not to move or we might miss our way, and I 
reminded him of that fact. "Haven't budged an inch" 
came the reply from the darkness. I had been describing 
a large circle. I can still hear that nurse laughing. 

At last we struck the huge blocks of ice, raised on the 
boulder rocks by the rise and fall of tide in shallow water, 
and we knew that we should make the land. The perver- 
sity of nature made us turn the wrong way for the village 
toward which we were aiming, and we found ourselves 
"tangled up" in the Boiling Brooks, a place where some 
underground springs keep holes open through the ice all 
winter. Suddenly, while marching ahead with the com- 
pass, seeking to avoid these springs, the ground being 
level enough for the nurse to act as her own helmsman, a 
tremendous "whurr! whurr!" under my feet restored 
suflScient leaping power to my weary legs to leave me 
head down and only my racquets out of the snow — all 
for a covey of white partridges on which I had nearly trod- 
den. At length we made a tiny winter cottage. The nurse 
slept on the bench, the doctor on the floor, the driver on 
a shelf. Our generous host had almost to hang himself 
on a hook. The dogs went hungry. But as we boiled our 
kettle, all agreed that we would not have exchanged the 
experience for ten rides in a Pullman Car. 

Largely through the zeal of my colleague, Dr. Arthur 
Wakefield, of Kendal, England, and that of my cousin. 




On the Way Home 




Carrying a Sick Dog 
DOG TRAVEL 



I 
I 



PROBLEMS ON LAND AND SEA sm 

Mr. Martyn Spencer, of New Zealand, a band of the 
Legion of Frontiersmen had been brought into being all 
along this section of coast, in spite of the scattered nature 
of the population. The idea was that having to depend 
so largely on the use of their guns, and being excellent 
shots with a bullet, the men would make good snipers and 
scouts if ever there were war. True, most of our people 
called it "playing soldiers," and no one took seriously 
that we were ever likely to be called upon to fight; but 
all Dr. Wakefield's hopes and fears were realized and our 
lads made both brave soldiers and excellent marksmen. 

Dr. and Mrs. Wakefield have given several years of 
both medical and industrial work for the people of this 
coast, both in St. Anthony, Forteau, Mud Lake, and 
Battle Harbour. 

Alas, the functions of superintendent involved execu- 
tive duties, and I had once again to run to St. John's, 
during the following summer, for a meeting of the Board 
of Directors. With true Christian unselfishness these men 
come all the way from Ottawa, New York, and Boston, to 
help with their counsel so relatively unimportant a work 
as ours. Sir Walter Davidson again lent his heartiest co- 
operation. The people owe him. Sir Herbert Murray, Sir 
Henry MacCallum, Sir William MacGregor, Sir Ralph 
Williams, Sir Alexander Harris, and all the long line of 
their Governors, more than most of them realize. They 
bring all the inspiration of the best type of educated, 
widely experienced, and travelled Englishmen to this 
Colony. They are specially trained and specially selected 
men, and can give their counsel and leadership abso- 
lutely untrammelled by any local prejudices. 

One excellent outcome of this particular meeting was 
the reorganization on a larger scale of the Girls' Commit- 
tee for the Institute. The success of it has been phenom- 



370 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

enal. Together with its protective work it has aimed at 
that most difficult task of creating in them sufficient am- 
bition to make the girls receiving very small wages want 
to pay for a better environment. The committee has al- 
ways been strictly interdenominational, with Mrs. W. C. 
Job and Mrs. W. E. Gosling as its presidents. It has made 
a " show place " of the Girls' Department of the Institute, 
and that department has become self-supporting — a 
most desirable goal for every philanthropy. 

The lumber mill and schooner building work were in 
slings. Our men, made far better off by the winter work 
thus provided, had acquired gear so much better for 
fishing than their former equipment that they could not 
resist engaging in the more remunerative work of the fish- 
ery in the summer months. For two years previous they 
had left before the drive was complete and the logs out 
of the woods. Now the local manager had also decided to 
fish during the three summer months — which is really 
the only time available for mill operations also. I was 
fortunate enough on my way North to persuade an expert 
lumber operator from Canada, and an entirely kindred 
spirit, Mr. Harry Crowe, to come down and help me out 
with the problem. We spent a few delightful days to- 
gether, in which he taught me as many things that every 
mill man should know as he would have had to learn had 
he been dabbling in pills. Like myself, Mr. Crowe is an 
ardent believer in Confederation with Canada for this little 
country. Before Mr. Crowe's efforts on our behalf had ma- 
terialized, a new friend, Mr. Walter Booth, of New York, 
well known in American football circles as one of the best 
of all-American forwards, came North and carried the mill 
for a year. The one and only fault of his regime was that 
it was too short. The field of work was one for which he was 
admirably equipped, but home reasons made him return 



PROBLEMS ON LAND AND SEA 371 

after his time expired. He has often told me since, how- 
ever, that he has fits of wishing that he could have put in 
a life with us in the North, rather than spending it in the 
more civilized circles of the New York Bar. 

Many invitations to speak, especially at universities 
in America, and through a lecture agency in England to 
numerous societies and clubs, led me to devote the winter 
of 1913-14 to a lecture tour. My wife induced me also to 
renew my youth by a holiday of a month on the Conti- 
nent. 

A lecture tour includes some of the most delightful ex- 
periences of life, bringing one into direct personal contact 
with so many people whom it is a privilege to know. But 
it also has its anxieties and worries, and eternal vigilance 
is the price of avoiding a breakdown at this the most 
difficult of all my work. One's memory is taxed far be- 
yond its capacity. To forget some things, and some people 
and some kindnesses, are unforgivable sins. A new host 
every night, a new home,^ a new city, a new audience, 
alone lead one into lamentable lapses. In a car full of people 
a man asked me one day how I liked Toledo. I replied 
that I had never been there. "Strange," he murmured, 
" because you spent the night at my house! " On another 
occasion at a crowded reception I was talking to a lady 
on one side and a gentleman on the other. I had been in- 
troduced to them, but caught neither name. They did 
not address each other, but only spoke to me. I felt that 
I must remedy matters by making them acquainted with 
each other, and therefore mumbled, "Pray let me pre- 
sent to you Mrs. M-m-m." "Oh! no need, Doctor," he 
replied. "We've been married for thirty years." Shortly 
after I noticed at a reception that every one wore his 
name pinned onto his breast, and I wondered if there were 
any connection. 



372 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

It is my invariable custom in the North to carry a 
water-tight box with matches and a compass chained to 
my belt. One night, being tired, I had turned into bed in a 
very large, strange room without noting the bearings of 
the doors or electric switches. My faithful belt had been 
abandoned for pyjama strings. It so happened that to 
catch a train I had to rise before daylight, and all my 
possessions were in a dressing-room. I soon gave up 
hunting for the electric hght. It was somewhere in the air, 
I knew, but beating the air in the dark with the windows 
wide open in winter is no better fun in your nightclothes 
in New York than in Labrador. A tour of inspection dis- 
covered no less than five doors, none of which I felt en- 
titled to enter in the dark in deshabille. The humour of 
the situation is, of course, apparent now, but even one's 
dog hates to be laughed at. 

An independent life has somehow left me with an in- 
stinctive dislike for asking casual acquaintances the way 
to any place that I am seeking. The aversion is more or 
less justified by the fact that outside the police force very 
exceptional persons can direct you, especially if they know 
the way themselves. On my first visit to New York I 
could see how easy a city it was to navigate, and returned 
to my host's house near Eighth Street in good time to 
dress for dinner after a long side trip near Columbia 
University and thence to the Bellevue Hospital. "How 
did you find your way?" my friend asked. *'Why, there 
was sufficient sky visible to let me see the North Star," 
I answered. I felt almost hurt when he laughed. It is 
natural for a polar bear not to have to inquire the way 
home. 

The aphorism attributed to Dr. John Watson, of "Be- 
side the Bonnie Briar Bush," suggests itself. "My fee is 
one hundred dollars if I go to a hotel, two hundred if I 



PROBLEMS ON LAND AND SEA 373 

am entertained, because in the latter event one can only 
live half so long." I conclude that he made the choice 
of Achilles, for he died on a lecture tour. So far fate has 
been kinder to me. 

The greatest danger is the reporter, especially the emo- 
tional reporter, who has not attended your meeting. I 
owe such debts to the press that this statement seems the 
blackest of ingratitude. On the contrary, I must plead 
that doctors are privileged. My controversy with this 
class of reporters is their generosity, which puts into 
one's mouth statements that on final analysis may be cold 
facts, but which, remembering that one is lecturing on 
work among people whom one loves and respects, it 
would never occur to me to slur at a public meeting. No 
one who tries to alter conditions which exist can ex- 
pect to escape making enemies. I have seen reports of 
what I have said at advertised meetings, that were sub- 
sequently cancelled. I have followed up rumours, and 
editors have expressed sorrow that they accepted them 
from men who had been too busy to be present. But "qui 
s'excuse, s'accuse"; and my conclusion is that the lec- 
turer is practically defenceless. 

Since our marriage my wife has generously acted as my 
secretary, having specially learned shorthand and type- 
writing in order to free me from carrying such a burden, 
and has helped me enormously ever since on this line. 
But lecture tours used to make me despair of keeping 
abreast of correspondence. I sometimes was forced to 
treat letters as Henry Drummond did — who allowed 
them to answer themselves — if I wished free mornings 
in which to visit the hospitals, just at the time that all 
their professional work was in progress. These clinics are 
invaluable and almost unique experiences. They persuaded 
me more than ever how much" depends in surgery as well 



374 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

as in medicine on "the man behind the gun"; and that 
mere mileage is not the real handicap on members of our 
profession whose fields of work lie away from the centres 
of learning. They also imbued me with the profoundest 
spirit of respect for the leaders of the healing art. 

To no one but myself did it seem odd that a plain Eng- 
lishman should be invited to perform the function of best 
man at the wedding of the daughter of the President of 
the United States of America at the White House. The 
matter was never even noticed either in the press or in 
conversation. The only citizen to whom I suggested the 
anomaly merely said, "Well, why not?" 

My long-time fellow worker and one of my best of 
friends, Francis B. Sayre, was to be married on Novem- 
ber 25, 1913, to Miss Jessie Wilson. Her father, who, 
when first I had had the honour of his acquaintance, hap- 
pened to be the President of Princeton University, was 
now the President of the United States. So we had all the 
fun of a White House wedding. Not less than fifty of our 
fishermen friends from Labrador and North Newfound- 
land were invited, and some members of our staff were 
present. 

We started the wedding procession upstairs, and came 
down to the fanfare of uniformed trumpeters. Our awk- 
wardness in keeping step, though we had rehearsed the 
whole business several times, only relieved the tension 
that must exist at so important an event in life. 

Trying to dodge the reporters added heaps of fun, 
which I am sure that they shared, for they generally got 
the better of us; though the thrill of escape from the 
White House and Washington, so that the honeymoon 
rendezvous should not be known, was practically a victory 
for the wedding party. As it would never be safe to use 



PROBLEMS ON LAND AND SEA 375 

the tactics again, I am permitted after the lapse of many 
years to give them away. As soon as dark fell, and while 
the guests were still revelling, the bride and groom were 
hustled into a secret elevator in the thickness of the wall, 
whisked up to the robing chambers, and completely dis- 
guised. Meanwhile a suitable camouflage of automobiles 
had arrived ostentatiously at the main entrance, to carry 
and escort the illustrious couple in fitting pomp to the 
great station. From the landing the couple were dropped 
direct to the basement to a prearranged oubliette. The 
password was the sound of the wheels of an ordinary cab 
at the kitchen entrance. The moments of suspense were 
not long. At the sound of the crush on the gravel a silent 
door was opened, two completely muffled figures crept 
out, and the conspirators drove slowly along round a few 
corners where a swift automobile lay panting to add 
liherU to SgaliU and fraternite. 



CHAPTER XXin 

A MONTH'S HOLIDAY IN ASIA MINOR 

After the fall spent in America in raising the necessary 
funds, it was the now famous Carmania which carried 
us to England. In spite of a few days' rest at my old home, 
and the stimulus of a Grenfell clan gathering in London, 
my wife and I were both in need of something which could 
direct our minds from our problems, and Boxing Day 
found us bound for Paris, Turin, Milan, and Rome. 

Just before Christmas I had had a meeting at the fa- 
mous office of the Hudson Bay Company in London, and 
attended another of their interesting luncheons where 
their directors meet. My old friend Lord Strathcona pre- 
sided. I could not help noting that after all the lapse of 
years since we first met at Hudson Bay House in Mon- 
treal, he still retained his abstemious habits. He was 
ninety-three, and still at his post as High Commissioner 
for a great people, as well as leading councillor of a dozen 
companies. His memory of Labrador and his days there, 
and his love for it, had not abated one whit. Hearing that 
the hospital steamer Strathcona needed a new boiler and 
considerable repairs, he ordered me to have the work un- 
dertaken at once and the bill sent to him. He, moreover, 
insisted that we should spend some days with him at his 
beautiful country house near London, an invitation which 
we accepted for our return, but which we were never fated 
to realize, for before the appointed date that able man 
had crossed the last bar. 

It is said to be better to be lucky than rich. We had ex- 
pected in Rome to do only what the Romans of our pock- 
et-book do. But we fell in with some old acquaintances 



A MONTH'S HOLIDAY IN ASIA MINOR 377 

whose pleasure it is to give pleasure, and New Year's 
night was made memorable by a concert given by the 
choir of the Sistine Chapel, to which we were taken by 
the editor of the "Churchman" and later of the "Con- 
structive Quarterly," an old friend of ours, Dr. Silas 
McBee. A glimpse into the British Embassy gave us an 
insight into the problem of Roman modern politics and 
the factions of the Black and White. 

Rome is always delightful. One is glad to forget the 
future and live for the time in the past. Sitting in the 
Coliseum in the moonlight I could see the gladiators 
fighting to amuse the civilized man of that period, and 
gentle women and innocent men dying horrible deaths 
for truths that have made us what we are, but which we 
now sometimes regard so lightly. 

I confess that reHgious buUdings, religious pictures, 
religious conventions of all kinds very soon pall on my 
particular temperament. It is possibly a defect in my 
development, like my inability to appreciate classical 
music. On the other hand, like Mark Twain, I enjoy an 
ancient mummy just because he is ancient; and were it 
not for the irritation of seeing so much religious display 
associated with such miserable social conditions in so 
beautiful a country, I should have more sympathy with 
those who would "see Rome and die." The sanitation of 
the one-time Mistress of the world suggests that it could 
not be difficult to accomplish that feat in the hot weather. 

Brindisi is a household word in almost every English 
home, especially one like ours with literally dozens of 
Anglo-Indian relatives. I was therefore glad to pass via 
Brindisi on the road to Athens. Patras also had its interest 
to me as a distributing centre for our Labrador fish. We 
actually saw three forlorn-looking schooners, with car- 
goes from Newfoundland, lying in the harbour. 



S78 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

One poignant impression left on my mind by Greece, 
as well as Rome, was its diminutive size. I almost re- 
sented the fact that a place civilized thousands of years 
ago, and which had loomed up on my imagination as 
the land of Socrates, of Plato, of Homer, of Achilles, of 
Spartan warriors, and immortal poets, all seemed so small. 
The sense of imposition on my youth worried me. 

In Athens one saw so many interesting relics within 
a few hundred yards that it left one with the feeling of 
having eaten a meal too fast. The scene of the battle of 
Salamis fascinated me. When we sat in Xerxes' seat and 
conjured up the whole picture again, and saw the meaning 
to the world of the great deed for which men so gladly 
gave their lives to defeat a tyrant seeking for world 
power, it made me love those old Greeks, not merely ad- 
mire their art. 

On Mars Hill we stood on the spot where, to me, per- 
haps the greatest man in history, save one, pleaded with 
men to accept love as the only durable source of great- 
ness and power. But every monument, every bas-relief, 
every tombstone showed that the fighting man was their 
ideal. 

The idea of sailing from the Piraeus reconciled us to the 
very mediocre vessel which carried us to Smyrna. Our 
visit to Asia Minor we had inadvertently timed to the 
opening of the International College at Paradise near 
Smyrna. This college is the gift of Mrs. John Kennedy of 
New York. Mr. Ralph Harlow, our host and a professor 
at the college, with Mr. Cass Reid and other friends, made 
it possible for us to enjoy intelligently our brief visit. It 
was just a dream of pleasure. Time forbids my describing 
the marvellous work of that and other colleges. Men 
of ambition, utterly irrespective of race, colour, creed, or 
sect, sit side by side as the alumni. The humanity, not 



A MONTH'S HOLroAY IN ASU MINOR 379 

the other-worldliness, of the leaders has made even the 
Turks, steeped in the blood of their innocent Christian 
subjects, recognize the untold value of these Christian 
universities, and kept them, their professors, and build- 
ings, safe during the war. 

Dr. Bliss, of Beyrout, once told us a humorous story 
about himself. He had just been addressing a large audi- 
ence in New York, when immediately after his speech 
the chairman rose and announced, "We will now sing 
the one hundred and fiftieth hymn, 'From the best bliss 
that earth imparts, we turn unfilled to Thee again.' " 

The preservation of Ephesus was a surprise to us, 
though of late the Turks have been carrying off its pre- 
cious historic marble to burn for lime for their fields. One 
large marble font in an old Byzantine baptistry was bro- 
ken up for that purpose while we were there. We stood 
on the very rostrum in the theatre where St. Paul and the 
coppersmith had trouble — while at the time of our visit, 
the only living inhabitant of that once great city was a 
hungry ass which we saw harboured in a dressing-room 
beneath the platform. 

The anachronism of buzzing along a Roman road, which 
had not been repaired since the days of the Caesars, on our 
way to Pergamos, in the only Ford car in the country, was 
punctuated by having to get out and shove whenever we 
came to a cross-drain. These always went over instead 
of under the road — only on an exaggerated Baltimorian 
plan. One night at Soma, which is the end of the branch 
railroad in the direction of Pergamos, we were in the best 
hotel, which, however, was only half of it for humans. A 
detachment of Turkish soldiers were billeted below in the 
quarters for the other animals. Snow was on the ground, 
and it was bitterly cold. The poor soldiers slept literally 
on the stone floor. We were cold, and we felt so sorry for 



380 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

them, that after we had enjoyed a hot breakfast, in a fit 
of generosity we sent them a couple of baskets of Turk- 
ish specialties. Later in the day we noticed that wherever 
we went a Turkish soldier with a rifle followed us. So we 
turned off into a side street and walked out into the coun- 
try. Sure enough the soldier came along behind. As guide 
to speak the many languages for us, we had a Greek 
graduate of International College, a very delightful young 
fellow, very proud of a newly acquired American citizen- 
ship. At last we stopped and bribed that soldier to tell 
us what the trouble was. "Our officer thought that you 
must be spies because you sent gifts to Turkish soldiers." 
At Pergamos, a Greek Christian — very well off — 
invited us to be his guests on Greek Christmas Eve. It 
was the occasion of a large family gathering. There were 
fine young men and handsome, dark-eyed girls, and all 
the accessories of a delightful Christian home. When the 
outer gates had been locked, and the inner doors bolted 
and blinds drawn down, and all possible loopholes ex- 
amined for spies, the usual festivities were observed. 
These families of the conquered race have lived in bond- 
age some four hundred years, but their patriotism has 
no more dimmed than that of ancient Israel under her 
oppressors. Before we left they danced for us the famous 
Souliet Dance — memorial to the brave Greek girls who, 
driven to their last stand on a rocky hilltop, jumped one 
by one over the precipice as the dance came round to 
each one, rather than submit to shame and slavery. From 
our friends at Smyrna we learned subsequently that when, 
a few months later, and just before the war, the German 
general visited the country, making overtures to the 
Turks, the blow fell on this family like many others, and 
they suffered the agony of deportation. 

At Constantinople the kindness of Mr. Morgenthau, 



A MONTH'S HOLIDAY IN ASIA MINOR 381 

the American Ambassador, and the optimism bred by 
Robert College and the Girls' School, left delightful 
memories of even the few days in winter that we spent 
there. The museum alone is worth the long journey to 
it, and when a teacher from the splendid Girls' School, 
herself a specialist on the Hittites, was good enough to 
show it to us, it was like a leap back into the long history 
of man. It seemed but a step to the Neanderthal skull 
and our Troglodyte forbears. 

Owing to shortage of time we returned to England 
through Bulgaria, passing through Serbia, and stopping 
for a day at Budapest and two at Vienna. We would have 
been glad to linger longer, for every hour was delightful. 

The month's holiday did me lots of good and sent me 
back to England a new man to begin lecturing again in 
the interests of the distant Labrador; and with the feeling 
that, after all, our doast was a very good place for one's 
life-work. 

We helped to lessen the tedium of the lectures by do- 
ing most of the travelling in an automobile of my broth- 
er's, in which we lived, moved, and had our meals by 
the roadside. The lectures took us everywhere from the 
drawing-room of a border castle on the line of the old 
Roman Wall — which Puck of Pook's Hill had made as 
fascinating for us as he did for the children — to the 
Embassy in Paris. 

Once more the Mauretania carried us to America. 
April was spent partly in lecturing and partly in attend- 
ing surgical clinics — a very valuable experience being 
a week's work with Dr. W- R. MacAusland, of Boston, at 
his orthopedic clinics in and around that city. He and 
his brother "Andy'* had passed a summer with us in 
Labrador. May found us in Canada visiting our help- 
ers, and stimulating various branches by lectures. While 



S82 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

loading the George B. Cluett in early June in St. John's, 
Newfoundland, we organized an education committee 
to work with the Institute Committee, to give regular 
educational lectures throughout the winter. Dr. Lloyd, 
our present Prime Minister, and Sir Patrick McGrath, 
always a stanch friend of the Mission, helped materially 
in this new activity. 

The Institute at the time was housing some of the 
crew of the Greenland, who had come through the terri- 
ble experiences at the seal fishery in the spring of 1914. 
Caught on the ice in a fearful blizzard, almost all had per- 
ished miserably. Some few had survived to lose limbs 
and functions from frostbums. The occasion gave the In- 
stitute one of the many opportunities for a service rather 
more dramatic than the routine, which did much to win 
it popularity. 

Midsummer's Day and the two following days we were 
stuck in a heavy ice-jam one hundred miles south of St. 
Anthony. My wife and boys had arrived in St. Anthony 
before me, and to find them in our own house, and the 
hospital full of opportunity for the line of help which I 
especially enjoy, afforded all that heart could wish. 

Early in July the Duke of Connaught, the Governor- 
General of Canada, paid us a long-promised visit. It was 
highly appreciated by all our people, who would possibly 
have paid him more undivided attention had he not been 
kind enough to send his band ashore — the first St. An- 
thony had ever heard. The resplendent uniforms of the 
members totally eclipsed that of the Duke, who was in 
"mufti"; but he readily understood that the division 
of attention was really not attributable to us. He proved 
to be a thorough good sport and a most democratic 
prince. 
L The war having broken out in August, we had only one 



I 



A MONTH'S HOLIDAY IN ASIA MINOR S83 

idea — economy on every side, that we might all be able 
to do what we could. We had not then begun to realize 
the seriousness of it sufficiently to dream that we should 
be welcome ourselves. We closed up all activities not en- 
tirely necessary, and even the hospital ship went into 
winter quarters so early that my fall trip was made from 
harbour to harbour in the people's own boats or by mail 
steamer or schooner, as opportunity ofifered. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

THE WAR 

In the fall of 1915, 1 was urged by the Harvard Surgical 
Unit to make one of their number for their proposed term 
of service that winter at a base hospital in France. Having 
discussed the matter with my directors, we decided that 
it was justifiable to postpone the lecture tour which had 
been arranged for me, in view of this new need. 

We sailed for England on the Dutch liner New Amster- 
dam and landed at Falmouth, passing through a cordon 
of mine-sweepers and small patrols as we neared the Eng- 
lish shores. My wife's offer to work in France not being 
accepted, since I held the rank of Major, we ran down 
to my old home, where she decided to spend most of her 
time. My uniform and kit were ready in a few days; and 
in spite of the multitudinous calls on the War Office offi- 
cials, I can say in defence of red tape that my papers were 
made out very quickly. I was thus able to leave promptly 
for Boulogne, near which I joined the other members of 
my Unit, who had preceded me by a fortnight. 

It was Christmas and the snow was on the ground 
when I arrived in France. There was much talk of trench 
feet and the cold. Our life in the North had afforded ex- 
periences more like those at the front than most people's. 
We are forced to try and obtain warmth and mobility 
combined with economy, especially in food and clothing. 
At the request of the editor, I therefore sent to the "Brit- 
ish Medical Journal" a summary of deductions from our 
Northern experiences. Clothes only keep heat in and 
damp out. Thickness, not even fur, will warm a statue, 
and our ideal has been to obtain light, wind- and water- 



THE WAR 385 

proof material, and a pattern that prevents leakage of the 
body's heat from the neck, wrists, waist, knees, and ankles. 
Our skin boots, by being soft, water-tight, and roomy, re- 
move the causes of trench feet. Later when I returned to 
England I was invited to the War Office to talk over the 
matter. The defects, either in wet and cold or in hot wea- 
ther, of woolen khaki cloth are obvious, and when sub- 
sequently I visited the naval authorities in Washington 
about the same subject, I was delighted to be assured 
that on all small naval craft om* patterns were being 
exclusively used. Who introduced them did not matter. 

I had also advocated a removable insert of sheet steel 
in a pocket on the breast of the tunic, this plate to be 
kept in the trenches and inserted on advancing; and a 
lobster-tail steel knee-piece in the knickers. Of this lat- 
ter Sir Robert Jones, the British orthopedic chief, appre- 
ciated the value, knowing how many splendid men are 
put hors de combat by tiny pieces of shell splinters infect- 
ing that joint. But the "Journal" censored all these ref- 
erences to armour. A wounded Frenchman at Berck pre- 
sented me with a helmet heavily dented by shrapnel, and 
told me that he owed his life to it. Later at General Head- 
quarters, General Sir Arthur Sloggett showed me a col- 
lection of a dozen experimental helmets, each of which 
stood for a saved life. 

One of the soldiers who came under my care had a bul- 
let wound through the palm of his hand. I happened to 
ask him where his hand had been when hit. He said, "On 
my hip. We were mending a break in our barbed wire 
at night, and a fixed rifle got me, exactly where it got my 
chum just afterwards, but it went through him." 

"Where did your bullet go?" 

"I don't know," he answered. 

An examination of his trousers showed the bullet in his 



386 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

pocket. It was embedded in three pennies and two francs 
which he happened to be carrying there, and which his 
wounded hand had prevented his feeHng for afterwards. 

Pathos and humour, Hke genius and madness, are close 
akin. One of the boys told me of a chum who was very 
" churchy," and always carried an Episcopal Prayer Book 
in his pocket — for which he was not a little chaffed. For 
a joke one day he was presented with a second that a mess- 
mate had received, but for which he had no use. His scru- 
ples about " wasting it" made him put it in his pocket with 
the other. Soon after this, in an advance, he was shot in 
the chest. The bullet passed right through the first Prayer 
Book and lodged in the second, where it was found on his 
arrival at hospital for another slight wound. He at least 
will long continue to swear by the Book of Common 
Prayer. 

One day, walking with other oflBcers in the country, we 
stumbled across a tiny isolated farm. As usual the voice 
of the inevitable Tommy could be heard from within. 
They were tending cavalry horses, which filled every 
available nook and corner behind the lines at a period 
when cavalry was considered useless in action. Having 
learned that one of these men had been body servant to a 
cousin of mine, who was a V.C. at the time that he was 
killed, I asked him for the details of his death. The Ger- 
mans had broken through on the left of his command, 
and it was instantly imperative to hold the morale while 
help from the right was summoned. Jumping on the para- 
pet, my cousin had stood there encouraging the line amid 
volleys of bullets. At the same time he ordered his serv- 
ant to carry word to the right at once. Suddenly a bullet 
passed through his body and he fell into the trench. Pro- 
testing that he was all right, he declared that he could hold 
out till the man should come back. On his return he found 



THE WAR S87 

that my cousin was dead. But help came, the hne held, 
and the German attack was a costly failure. His servant 
had collected and turned in all the little personal posses- 
sions of any value which he had found on the body. 

"I think that you should have got a Mihtary Cross," I 
said. 

"I did get an M.C.," he answered. 

*'I congratulate you," I replied. 

"It was a confinement to barracks. A bullet had smashed 
to pieces a little wrist watch which the captain always 
carried. It was quite valueless, and I had kept the rem- 
nants as a memento of a man whom every one loved. 
But a comrade got back at me by reporting it to head- 
quarters, and they had to punish me, they said." 

It is true, "strafing" was at a low ebb at the time that 
I arrived in France; but even I was not a bit prepared 
for the amount of leisure time that our duties allowed us. 
There were in France hundreds of sick and wounded for 
every one in the lonely North; but in Labrador you are 
always on the go, being often the only available doctor. 
Our Unit had at the time only some five hundred beds 
and a very strong staff, both of doctors and nurses. In 
spite of lending one of our colonels and several of our 
staff to other hospitals, we still had not enough beds to 
keep us fully occupied. It gave me ample time to help 
out occasionally in Y.M.C.A. activities, and to do some 
visiting among the poor French families and refugees in 
Boulogne, close to which city our hospital was located. 
I could also visit other Units, and give lantern shows, 
which had, I thought, special value when psychic treat- 
ment was badly needed. Shell-shock was but very imper- 
fectly understood at the beginning of the war. The foot- 
ball matches and athletic sports did not need the asset 
of being an antidote to shell-shock to attract my patron- 



388 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

age. Never in my life had I realized quite so keenly what 
a saving trait the sporting instinct is in the Anglo-Saxon 
— a strain of it in the Teuton might have even averted 
this war. 

My stay in France enabled me to enjoy that which life 
on the Labrador largely denies one — the contact with 
many educated minds. It was the custom, if an officer 
needed a lift along the road, to hail any passing motor. 
While walking one day, I took advantage of this privilege, 
and found myseM driving with Sir Bertrand Dawson, the 
King's physician, with whom I thus renewed a most val- 
ued acquaintanceship. On another occasion our host or 
guest might be Sir Almroth Wright, the famous pathol- 
ogist, or Sir Robert Jones would pay us a visit, or Sir Fred- 
erick Treves. In fact, we had chances to meet many of 
the great leaders of our profession. Sir Arthur Lawley, the 
head of our Red Cross in France, gave me some delightful 
evenings. Unquestionably there is an intense- pleasure 
in hearing and seeing personally the men who are doing 
things. 

Food grew perceptibly scarcer in Boulogne even during 
my stay. The petits gateaux got smaller, the hours during 
which officers might enter restaurants for afternoon tea 
became painfully shorter. But they were not a whit less 
enjoyable, reminding one as they did of the dear old days, 
long before the war was thought of, and before the war 
of life had taken me to Labrador. If one had hoped that 
a life in the wilds had succeeded in eradicating natural 
desires, those relapses in the midst of war-time completely 
destroyed any such delusion. Every day was full of ex- 
citement. Bombs fell on the city only twice while I was 
there, and, moreover, we were bitterly disappointed that 
we did not know it till we read the news in the morn- 
ing paper. But every day flying machines of all sqrts 



THE WAR 389 

sailed overhead. My interest never failed to respond to 
the buzzing of some hurrying airship, or the sight of a 
seaplane dropping out of heaven into the water and swim- 
ming calmly ashore, waddling up the beach into its pen 
exactly like a great duck. 

One day it was the excitement of watching trawlers 
from the cliffs firing-up mines; another, hunting along 
the beach among the silent evidences of some tragedy 
at sea, or riding convalescent horses that needed exercise, 
flying along the sands to see some special sight, such as 
the carcass of a leviathan wrecked by butting into mine- 
fields. 

Close to us was a large Canadian Unit. They were 
changing their location, and for three months had been 
in the sorry company of those who have no work to do. 
The matron, however, told me that she found plenty to 
occupy her time — in such a beehive of officers, with 
seventy-five nurses to look after. 

When at the close of the period for which I had volun- 
teered I had to decide whether to sign on again, my whole 
inclination was to stay just another term; but as my com- 
mandant. Colonel David Cheever, informed me that he 
and a number of the busier men felt that duty called 
them home, and that there were plenty of volunteers to 
take our places, my judgment convinced me that I was 
more needed in Labrador. 

I shall not say much of the Y.M.C.A. They need no 
encomium of mine, but I am prepared to stand by them 
to the last ditch. They were doing, not talking, and were 
wise enough to use even those agents whom they knew 
to be imperfect, as God Himself does when He uses us. 
The folly of judging for all cases by one standard is com- 
mon and human, but it is not God's way. This convic- 
tion was brought home to me in a very odd manner. I 



390 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

had gone to lecture at an English Y.M.C.A. hut at the 
invitation of the efficient director, who knew me only 
for a "medical missionary." On my arrival he most hos- 
pitably took me to the cupboard which he called "his 
rooms." It was a raw, cold night, and among other efforts 
to show his gratitude for my help, to my amazement he 
offered me "a drop of Scotch." Astonishment so outran 
good-breeding that I unwittingly let him perceive it. "I 
am not a regular 'Y' man, Major," he explained. "I'm 
an Australian, and was living on my little pile when the 
war began. They turned me down each place I volun- 
teered on account of my age. But I was crazy to do my 
bit, and I offered to work with the Y.M.C.A. as a stop- 
gap. The War Office has commandeered so many of their 
men that they had to take me to 'carry on.' I'm afraid 
I'm a poor apology, but I'm doing my best." 

The freedom from convention lent another peculiar 
charm to the life in France. The mess sergeant of a head- 
quarters where I was dining one night, close behind the 
lines, presented the colonel with a beautifully illustrated 
monograph on a certain unmentionable and unwelcome 
member of war camps and trench life. The beautiful work 
and the evidences of scientific training led me to ask who 
the mess sergeant might have been in civil life. "Professor 
of Biology at the University of ," was the reply. 

The most inspiring fact about the Channel ports at 
that time was the regularity with which steamers ar- 
rived, crowded with soldiers, and returned with wounded. 
We could see England on clear days from our quarters, 
and could follow the boats almost across. The number 
of trawlers at work all the year round, even in heavy 
gales that almost blew us off the cliffs, was enough to tell 
how vigilant a watch was being kept all the while. One 
morning only we woke to find a large stray steamer, that 



THE WAR S91 

had entered the roads overnight, sunk across the harbour 
mouth, her decks awash at low water — torpedoed, we 
supposed. Another day a small patrol, literally cut in 
half by a mine, was towed in. But though both in the air 
and under the sea all the ingenuity of the enemy from 
as near by as Ostend was unceasingly directed against 
that living stream, not one single disaster happened 
the whole winter that I was out. Our mine-fields were 
constantly being changed. The different courses the traf- 
fic took from day to day suggested that. But who did it, 
and when, no one ever knew. The noise of occasional 
bomb-firing, once a mine rolling up on the shore, exploding 
and throwing some incredibly big fragments onto the 
golf links, the incessant tramp of endless soldiers in the 
street, the ever-present but silent motors hurrying to 
and fro, and the nightly arrival of convoys of wounded, 
were all that reminded us that any war was in prog- 
ress. Had it been permitted, the beach would have been 
crowded as usual with invalids, nursemaids, and peram- 
bulators. 

The second marvel was that in spite of the enormous 
numbers of people coming and going, no secrets leaked 
out. We gave up looking for news almost as completely 
as in winter in Labrador. We seemed to be shut off en- 
tirely in an eddy of the stream, as we are in our Northern 
wastes. 

The spirit of humour in the wounded Briton was as in- 
valuable as the love of sport when he is well. On one occa- 
sion a small party were going to relieve a section of the line. 
The Boches had the range of a piece of the road over, 
which they had to pass, and the men made dashes singly 
or in small munbers across it. A lad, a well-known ath- 
lete, was caught by a shell and blown over a hedge into 
a field. When they reached him, his leg was gone and one 



392 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

arm badly smashed. He was sitting up smoking a cigar- 
ette, and all he said was, "Well, I fancy that's the end 
of my football days." One very undeveloped man, who 
had somehow leaked into Kitchener's Army, told me, 
*' Well, you see, Major, I was a bit too weak for a labour- 
ing man, so I joined the army. I thought it might do 
my 'ealth good!" One of the English papers reported 
that when a small Gospel was sent by post to a prisoner 
in Germany the Teuton official stamped every page, 
"Passed by the Censor." 

The practice of listening to the yarns of the wounded 
was much discouraged, chiefly for one's own sake, for their 
knowledge was less accurate than our own, while shell- 
shock led them to imagine more. The censor had always 
good yarns to tell. The men showed generally much good- 
humour and a universal hght-heartedness. Our wounded 
hardly ever "groused." They hid their troubles and 
cheered their families, seldom or never by "pious senti- 
ments. One man writing from a regimental camp close 
to Boulogne, after a painfully uneventful Channel cross- 
ing, announced, "Here we are in the enemies' country 
right under the muzzles of the guns. We got over quite 
safely, though three submarines chased us and shelled 
us all the way. Food here is very short. I have n't looked 
at a bun for weeks. A bit more of that cake of yours would 
do nicely, not to talk o' smokes. Your loving husband.'* 
Another letter was quoted in the "Daily Mail." It ran: 
"Dear Mother — This comes hoping that it may find 
you as it leaves me at present. I have a broken leg, and a 
bullet in my left lung. Your affectionate son." 

Yet the men were far from fatalists, and the psychic 
stimulus of being able to tell your patient that he was 
ordered to "Blighty" was demonstrable on his history 
chart. One poor fellow whose right arm was infected with 



THE WAR 3&3 

gas bacillus was so anxious to save it that we left it on too 
long and general blood poisoning set in. He was on the 
dying list. The Government under these circumstances 
would pay the expenses of a wife or mother to come over 
and say the last good-bye. After the message went, it 
seemed that our friend could not last till their arrival, and 
the colonel decided as a last chance to try intra-venous 
injections of Eusol, the powerful antiseptic in use at that 
time in all the hospitals. On entering the ward the next 
morning the nurse told me with a smiling face, "B. is ever 
so much better. I think that he will pull through all right." 
"Then the Eusol injection has done good, I suppose.?" 
"His wife and mother came last night and sat up with 
him" — and I saw a twinkle in the corner of her eye. 
Eusol injections are now considered inert. 

With so many patients who only remained so short a 
time, there was an inevitable tendency to relapse into 
treating men as " cases," not as brothers. To get through 
their exterior needed tact and experience. But if love is a 
force stronger than bayonets and guns, it certainly has 
its place in modern — and all time — surgery. I have a 
shrewd suspicion that it is better worth exhibiting than 
quite a number of the drugs still on the world's pharma- 
copoeias. Many of the nurses kept visitors' books, and in 
these their patients were asked to write their names or 
anything they liked. The little fact made them feel more 
at home, as if some person really cared for them. One 
could not help noticing how many of them broke out into 
verse, though most of them were labouring men at home. 
Although some was not original, it showed that they liked 
poetry. Some was extempore, as the following: 

" Good-bye, dear mother, sister, brother. 
Drive away those bitter tears. 
For England's in no danger 
While there are bomb throwers in the Tenth Royal Fusiliers." 



394 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

The following effusion I think was doubtless evolved 
gradually. It runs : 

"There's a little dug-out in a trench. 
Which the rainstorms continually drench. 
With the sky overhead, and a stone for a bed. 
And another that acts for a bench. 

"It's hard bread and cold bully we chew; 
It is months since we've tasted a stew; 
And the Jack Johnsons flare through the cold wintry air. 
O'er my little wet home in the trench. 

"So hurrah for the mud and the clay. 
Which leads to *der Tag,' that's the day 
When we enter Berlin, that city of sin. 
And make the fat Berliners pay." 

I have never been in any sense what is generally under- 
stood by the term "faith healer," but I am certain that 
you can make a new man out of an old one, can save a 
man who is losing ground, and turn the balance and help 
him to win out through psychic agencies when all our 
chemical stimulants are only doing harm. That seemed 
especially true in those put hors de combat by the almost 
superhuman horrors of this war. It seemed to me to pay 
especially to get the confidence of one's patients. Thus 
one man would be drawn out by the gift of a few flowers, 
a little fruit, cigarettes, as so many of the kindly visitors 
discovered. One man with shrapnel splinters in his ab- 
domen expressed a craving for Worcester sauce. It ap- 
peared to him so unobtainable in a hospital in France. 
From the point of view of his recovery I am convinced 
that the bottle which we procured in Boulogne was a 
good investment. 

We eagerly awaited the illustrated papers each week for 
the same reason. But personal interest shown in them- 



THE WAR 395 

selves, by the time spared for chatting, was far the most 
appreciated. We had been very rightly warned against 
listening to the wounded men. It was with them in the 
base hospitals that the story of the angels of Mons origi- 
nated. I never met any one personally who saw anything 
nearer the supernatural than that marvellous fight itself 
— the pluck and endurance of our " contemptible little 
army." But some claimed to have seen a spirit but visible 
army, such as Elijah at Dothan showed to his servant, or 
Castor and Pollux at Lake Regillus, fighting in front of 
our lines. A Canadian in command of the C.A.M.C. con- 
tingent, who treated thousands of the wounded as they 
came back from the front, told me that early in the day 
he heard the rumour, and ordered his men to ask as many 
as possible if they had seen any such phenomenon. Not 
one claimed to have done so. Yet a few days later from the 
base he heard a great many of these same men had de- 
clared that they had seen the "angels." He considered 
that the whole matter arose originally through some hys- 
terical woman, and then was augmented by the sugges- 
tion of the question which he himself had put to them, 
made to men shell-shocked and in abnormal mental con- 
ditions. 

Among other deductions from voluminous notes I 
judged that the Saxons really did not want to fight, the 
impression coming from so many different sources. Some 
said that they let us know, shouting across "No Man's 
Land," that they did not wish to fight, that they were 
Christians, had wives and children of their own, that they 
did not want to kill any one, and would fire in the air 
when forced to fire, were keen to renew the Christmas 
"pour-parlers." Our men claimed that it was compara- 
tive peace when the Saxons were in the trenches opposite, 
and they made friendly overtures as often as they dared. 



396 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

They were capable of attributing honour to others, and 
those who came over into our hues asserted that hundreds 
were anxious to do so, only they were so watched from be- 
hind. Moreover, the outrages committed by the Prus- 
sians under flags of truce had made it impossible for our 
men to allow any one to approach. To sit opposite a 
Saxon regiment for a month and not exchange shots ap- 
peared to be not uncommon. One man told me that they 
poked up a notice on their bayonets saying, "We are not 
going to fight"; and another said that once when "straf- 
ing" somehow commenced, they shouted from the oppo- 
site trenches: "Save your bullets. You'll need them to- 
night when the Prussian Guard relieves us" — which 
proved perfectly true. One day an elderly man drawled out 
of their trench, came to our barbed wire, and called out 
for bread. We threw him a loaf. He wrapped up some- 
thing in his cap and threw it over. We tossed it back with 
more bread, but when he went back he left- the watch 
behind. 

After an especially brutal piece of treachery, our men 
were too maddened to give quarter, and one said, "A 
Saxon might have had a chance with us even then, but 
a Prussian would have had about as little as a beetle at 
a woodpecker's prayer meeting!" The Saxons, on the 
other hand, displayed the individual courage of the Anglo- 
Saxon that helped to lessen our losses by enabling us to 
attack in open formation. Every animal will fight when 
forced to do so. The cowardly wolf will attack only in 
packs; and one of the main reasons for the wholesale 
holocausts of mass attacks seems to have been that same 
lack of real courage in the boastful and militarist element. 
He dare not advance alone. 

A colonel in command at the first battle of the Aisne 
described to me an incident that I at least did not hear 



THE WAR 397 

elsewhere. He said that the Germans opposite him came 
on sixteen abreast, arm in arm, rifles at the trail or held 
anyhow. They were singing wildly, and literally jumping 
up and down, as if dancing. Fire was reserved till they 
came within a few hundred yards, when machine guns 
started to mow them down. Hay-pooks, or rather man- 
pooks, were immediately formed, and the advancing 
column, instead of coming straight on, went round and 
round the ever-increasing stacks. He believed that they 
had been filled with too much dope or too much doctored 
grog of some kind. 

It was my great desire before returning from France 
to see the conditions at the front. I was told that mem- 
bers of American Units were discouraged from visiting 
the trenches. Dr. Carrel had twice most kindly invited 
me to Compiegne to see his new work on wounds, but 
permission to accept had been denied me. Being a British 
subject and wearing a British decoration on an Ameri- 
can uniform only seemed to worry the authorities. I had 
almost abandoned hope, when one day an automobile 
stopped at our headquarters, just at the close of my 
term of service, and a colonel, a distinguished scientist, 
jumped out. He told me if I could get to Medical Head- 
quarters, then at St. Omer, he could arrange for me to 
visit each of the four armies I wished to see. I had no 
permission to leave the base, though my term of service 
expired the next day. I had no passes, and our British 
commandant would not on his own responsibility either 
give me leave or lend me the necessary outfit. He would 
only agree to look the other way if I went. 

Passing the sentries was not difficult, but once arrived 
in St. Omer, it was essential to have permission from 
Headquarters before one could enter any house or hotel. 
I was accordingly dumped in the dark streets of a strange 



398 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

town and told to be at that exact spot again in two hours, 
waiting my sponsor's return. Nor did he say where he was 
going, in ease we failed to meet, for no one was allowed to 
mention the whereabouts of the G.H.Q. After two hours 
were over, I was at the appointed spot with that pleasur- 
able sense of excitement that seldom comes after one has 
settled down in life. I could then understand better how 
a spy must feel. The town naturally was unlit for fear of 
aircraft, and yet there was a queer feeling that every one 
was looking at you as you walked up and down in the dark. 
My colonel friend was at the rendezvous with all the 
precision of a soldier, not only with the necessary papers 
and arrangements for the tour of inspection, but also a 
genial invitation to dine at Headquarters. General Sir 
Arthur Sloggett and his exceedingly able staff opened my 
eyes very considerably before the evening was out as to 
the methods of the R.A.M.C. in war-time. It was such a 
revelation to me that I felt it would be an infinite comfort 
to those with loved ones in the trenches to realize how 
marvellously efficient the provision for the care of the 
soldier's health had become. The main impression on my 
mind was the extraordinary developments since the days 
of the Lady of the Lamp. Formerly, so long as he was fit 
to fight, the soldier was always looked after. Now the 
soldier unfit to fight had exactly the same rights, just as 
after the war let us trust that the broken soldier will be 
"seen through" back into civil life. I was honestly sur- 
prised that he no longer depended on voluntary gifts to 
a charitable society for a bandage when he lay wounded 
or for a nurse if sickness overtook him. The marvellous 
system of the medical intelligence department, even the 
separate medical secret service, worked so efficiently that 
in spite of the awful conditions the health of the men in 
the line was twice as good as that when at home in civil 



THE WAR S99 

life. Even disease approaching from the enemy's side was 
"spied," and as far as possible forestalled. All sanitary- 
arrangements, all water supplies, and all public health 
matters from the North Sea to the Swiss border were 
handled by regular army officers. For the first time in his- 
tory the medicals were considered so intimate a part of 
the fighting force that doctors held the same rank as exec- 
utive officers. I was a major — no longer a surgeon major 
or just a sanitary official. Those in command were even 
trusted in advance with information as to what would 
likely be required of them on any part of the front by 
some manoeuvre or attack, though I do not think that 
even the general of the R.A.M.C. was admitted to the 
council of war. 

The chart-room of the G.H.Q. was another revelation. 
The walls from ceiling to floor were occupied with the 
usual large-scale maps, with flags on pins; while long, 
weird, crooked lines of all colours made elaborate tracings 
over the charts, like those used in hospitals. These flags 
and lines indicated the surgical and medical front, where 
battles with typhoid, trench feet, and wounds were being 
waged by the immense army of workers under General 
Sloggett's direction. Laboratories in motor cars, special 
surgeons and ambulances were racing here and there, new 
hospitals for emergencies were being pushed in different 
directions, so that though within range of the enemies' 
guns, men wounded in the chest or abdomen could be 
treated in time to give them a chance for their lives. 
Typhoid recurring in any section of the line might mean 
the reprimand of the medical officer there; trench feet 
became a misdemeanour, so excellent were the precau- 
tions devised and carried out by the N.C.O.'s. 

I ventured at table to say quite truthfully that I, a 
surgeon from a base hospital, where we saw endless Red 



400 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

Cross motor ambulances, and received so many kind- 
nesses in supplies, and especially luxuries for our wounded 
from the Red Cross officials, had been under the impres- 
sion that the R.A.M.C. was a sort of small tail to a very 
large Red Cross kite, owing to our little army and gen- 
eral unpreparedness when the war broke out. I could see 
that to my surprised hosts I appeared to be mentally 
deficient, but I was able to assure them that there were 
tens of thousands who knew even less than that, and 
thought that the chances still were that if their loved ones 
were hurt, they might be left to die because some one had 
not given their annual contribution to a society. It seemed 
a very serious omission that the public had not the in- 
formation that would carry so much consolation with it. 
The British Red Cross has every one's love and support, 
but its function in war, as one officer said, must increas- 
ingly become, in relation to the R.A.M.C, that of a 
Sunday-school treat to the staff of the school. 

The officialdom of Germany and even of France had 
always contrasted very unfavourably in my mind with 
our English methods. I was surprised in America that so 
many hospitals were Government institutions, and yet 
worked so well. 

At Melville we turned aside to inspect what was ap- 
parently a second Valley of Hinnom. It was a series of 
furnaces, built out of clay and old cans, efficiently dis- 
posing of the garbage of a town and a large section of 
the line. At West Outre an officer found time to show 
us his ingenious improvised laundry. His share was to 
fight the enemy by keeping our boys decently clean; and 
for this purpose he collected their dirty linen into huge 
piles. He had diverted the only available brook so as to 
put a portable building over it. His battalion consisted 
of the whole female strength of the country-side, and 



THE WAR 401 

had to be prepared to advance or retire pari passu with 
the other fighters. The chattering, shouting crowd, al- 
most invisible in the fog of steam as we walked through, 
made me realize how difficult a command this regiment 
of washerwomen constituted. The triumph was that 
they all appeared to be contented and fraternal. 

As every one knows one of the worst problems of the 
trenches was vermin. We entered a huge building used 
in peace-time for the purposes of dyeing. A Jack Johnson 
had only just exploded in the moat that brought the 
water to the tanks, but provision was made for trifles of 
this kind. When we peered over the edge of a steaming 
vat, it was to discover a platoon of Tommies enjoying 
the "time of their lives," before they joined the line of 
naked beings, each scrubbing the now happy man ahead. 
An endless stream of garments advanced through electric 
superheaters in parallel columns. There seemed as much 
excitement about the chance of every man getting his 
own clothing back as there is in the bran pie at a chil- 
dren's Christmas party. 

While visiting the mud and squalor of a front trench 
in Flanders, only a few yards from the enemy's lines, 
the cheery occupants offered to brew some tea, exactly 
as we *'boil our kettle" and have a good time in the 
safety of our Northern backwoods. One day I picked up 
some bright blue crystals. They proved to be "blue- 
stone," or sulphate of copper. When my pilot noticed 
that its presence puzzled me, he remarked casually, 
"There was a regimental dressing-station there a day 
or so ago. Probably that is the remains of it." 

On a siding at Calais station a veritable pyramid of 
filth met my eyes. On inspection it proved to be odd old 
boots dug from the mud of the battle-fields, and, sorted 
out from the other endless piles of debris, brought back 



402 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

as salvage. To attack one pair of such boots is depres- 
sing. Melancholia alone befitted the pile. Yet I saw 
close at hand, through a series of sheds, this polluted 
current entering and coming out at the other end new 
boots, at the rate of a thousand pairs a day — the talis- 
man not being a Henry Ford of boot-making, but just 
a smiling English colonel in the sporting trousers of a 
mounted officer. 

The ground was still under snow, and we drove over 
much ice and through much slush as we returned to our 
base at Boulogne. My colleagues had gone back to 
America and it was a terribly lonely journey to London, 
though both steamer and train were crowded. The war ^ 
was not yet won, and I could not help feeling an intense m 
desire to remain and see it through with the brave, gen- m 
erous-hearted men who were giving their lives for our 
sakes. Loneliness scarcely describes my sensations; it felt 
more like desertion. One road to despair would be the 
awful realization that one is not wanted. The work loom- 
ing ahead was the only comforting element, with the 
knowledge that the best of wives and partners was wait- 
ing in London to help me out. 1 



CHAPTER XXV 

FORWARD STEPS 

My return to the work after serving in France was em- 
bittered by a violent attack made upon me in a St. John's 
paper. It was called forth by a report of a lecture in 
Montreal where I had addressed the Canadian Club. 
The meeting was organized by Newfoundlanders at the 
Ritz Carlton Hotel, and the fact that a large number 
from the Colony were present and moved the vote of 
thanks at the end should have been suflBcient guarantee 
of the bona fides of my statements. But the over-enthu- 
siastic account of a reporter who unfortunately was not 
present gave my critics the chance for which they were 
looking. It was at a time when any criticism whatever 
of a country that was responding so generously to the 
homeland's call for help would have been impolitic, 
even if true. It subsequently proved one factor, however, 
in obtaining the commission of inquiry from the Govern- 
ment, and so far was really a blessing to our work. In 
retrospect it is easy to see that all things work together 
for good, but at the time, oddly enough, even if such 
repyorts are absolutely false, they hurt more than the 
point of a good steel knife. Anonymous letters, on the 
contrary, with which form of correspondence I have 
a bowing acquaintance, only disturb the waste-paper 
basket. 

The Governor, the representatives of our Council, the 
Honourable Robert Watson and the Honourable W. C. 
Job, and my many other fast friends, however, soon 
made it possible for me to forget the matter. If protest 
breeds opposition, it in turn begets apposition, and a 



404 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

good line of demarcation — a "no man's land" between 
friend and foe — and gives a healthy atmosphere in so- 
called times of peace. 

In the year 1915 a large cooperative store was estab- 
lished at Cape Charles near Battle Harbour, which 
bred such opposition amongst certain merchants that 
it proved instrumental also in obtaining for us the Gov- 
ernment commission of inquiry sent down a few months 
later. After a thorough investigation of St. Anthony, 
Battle Harbour, Cape Charles, Forteau, Red Bay, and 
Flowers Cove, summoning every possible witness and 
tracing all rumours to their source, the commissioners' 
findings were so favourable to the Mission that on their 
return to St. John's our still undaunted detractors could 
only attribute it to supernatural agencies. 

My colleague at Battle Harbour, Dr. John Grieve, 
who with his wife had already given us so many years' 
work there, and whose interest in the cooperative effort 
at Cape Charles was responsible for its initial success, 
had worked out a plan for a winter hospital station in 
Lewis Bay, and had surveyed the necessary land grant. 
Through the resignation of our business manager, Mr. ^ 

Sheard, and the selection of Dr. Grieve by the directors ^ 
as his successor, only that part of the Lewis Bay scheme 
which enables us to give work in winter providing wood 
supplies has so far materialized. 

In 1915 also, at a place called Northwest River, one 
hundred and thirty miles up Hamilton Inlet from Indian 
Harbour, a little cottage hospital and doctor's house 
combined was built, called the "Emily Beaver Cham- 
berlain Memorial Hospital." Thus the work of Dr. and 
Mrs. Paddon has been converted into a continuous serv- 
ice, for formerly when Indian Harbour Hospital was " 
closed in the fall, they had no place in which they could 



FORWAED STEPS 405 

efficiently carry on their work during the winter months. 
Before Dr. Paddon came to the coast. Dr. and Mrs. 
Norman Stewart gave us several years of valuable ser- 
vice, spending their summers at Indian Harbour and 
returning for the winter to St. Anthony, according to my 
original plan when I first built St. Anthony Hospital. 

An old friend and worker at St. Anthony, Mr. John 
Evans of Philadelphia, who had helped us with our deer 
and other problems, having married our head nurse, the 
first whom we had ever had from Newfoundland, found 
it essential to return and take up remunerative work at 
home. 

The increasing number of patients seeking help at St. 
Anthony made it necessary to provide proportionately 
increasing facilities. As I have stated elsewhere, the 
sister of my splendid colleague. Dr. Little, in 1909 had 
raised the money for the new wing of the hospital for the 
accommodation of the simimer accession of patients. 
The clinic which had now grown so tremendously, due 
to Dr. Little's magnificent work, was maintaining a 
permanent house surgeon. Dr. Louis Fallon, who had 
faithfully served the Mission at different times at oth^ 
stations. We had also regular dental and eye departments. 

The summer of 1917 was saddened for us all by the 
loss to the work of my beloved and able colleague. Dr. 
John Mason Little, Jr., who had given ten years of most 
valuable labour to the people of this coast. He had 
married, some years before, our delightful and unselfish 
helper. Miss Ruth Keese, and they now had four little 
children growing up in St. Anthony. The education of 
his family and the call of other home ties made him feel 
that it had become essential for him to terminate his 
more intimate connection with the North, and he left us 
to take up medical work in Boston. The loss of them both 



406 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

was a very heavy one to the work and to us personally, 
and we are only thankful that we have been able to 
secure Dr. Little's invaluable assistance and advice on 
our Board of Directors in Boston. This coast and this 
hospital owe him a tremendous debt which can never 
be repaid, for it was he who put this clinic in a position 
to hold up its head among the best of medical work, and 
offer to this far-off people the grade of skilled assistance 
which we should wish for our loved ones if they were ill 
or in trouble. For Dr. Little offered not only his very 
exceptional skill as a surgeon, but also the gift of his 
inspiring and devoted personality. 

The winter of 1917-18 was extremely severe, not only 
in our North country, but in the United States and 
Canada also. I was lecturing during this winter in both 
these latter countries, though during the months of 
December and January travelHng became very difficult 
owing to the continuous blizzards. I was held up for 
three days in Racine, Wisconsin, as neither trains, electric 
cars, or automobiles could make their way through the 
heavy drifts. Had I had my trusty dog team, however, 
I should not have missed three important lecture en- 
gagements. Life in the North has its compensations. 

At Toronto I was unfortunate enough to contract 
bronchitis and pleurisy, and I understand from com- 
petent observers that I was an "impossible patient." 
Be that as it may, so much pressure was brought to bear 
on me that at last I was forced to obey the doctors and 
leave for a month's rest in a warmer climate. 

Owing to ice and war conditions we did not arrive in 
St. Anthony until the first of July. In arriving late we 
were all spared a terrible shock. The previous day some 
of the boys from the Orphanage had gone fishing in the 
Devil's Pond, about a mile away, and a favourite resort 




THE LABRADOR DOCTOR IN WINTER 



FORWARD STEPS 407 

with them. Unfortunately that afternoon they were 
seized with the brilHant idea of kindling a fire with which 
to cook their trout. Greatly to the astonishment of the 
would-be cooks, the fire quickly got beyond the one 
desired for culinary purposes, and, panic-stricken, they 
rushed home to give the alarm. Every man ashore and 
afloat came and worked, and the obliteration of the place 
was saved by a providential change in the wind and 
wide fire-breaks cut through few and ill-to-be-spared 
trees. Everything had been taken from our house- — 
even furniture and linen — and dragged to the wharf 
head, where terrified children, fleeing patients, and 
heaps of furnishings from the orphanage and elsewhere 
were all piled up. Schooners had been hauled in to carry 
off what was possible, and the patients in the hospital 
were got ready to be carried away at a moment's notice. 
Only the most strenuous efforts saved the entire station. 
Now all our beautiful sky-line is blackened and charred. 
All day long the gravity of the debt was in our hearts, 
for if the wooden buildings had once had the clouds of 
fiery sparks settle upon them, the whole of those de- 
pendent upon us would have been homeless. Surely in a 
country like this, the incident of this fire puts an added 
emphasis upon our need of brick buildings. Gratitude 
for our safe return, for all God's mercies to us, and joy 
over the outcome of the at one time apparently inevitable 
disaster, made our first day of the season a never-to-be- 
forgotten event. 

Mr. W. R. Stirling, our Chicago director, who had per- 
sonally visited the hospitals, insisted that a water supply 
must at all costs be secured both for hospital and orphan- 
age. This was not only to avert the reproach of typhoid 
epidemics, two of which had previously occurred, but 
also to better our protection for so many helpless lives in 



408 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

old dry wooden buildings, and to economize the great 
expense of hauling water by dogs every winter, when our 
little surface reservoir was frozen to the bottom. This 
water supply has only just been finished; and now we 
cannot understand how we ever existed without it. But 
it is an unromantic object to which to give money, and 
the total cost, even doing the work ourselves, amounted 
to just upon ten thousand dollars. According to the Gov- 
ernment engineer's advice we had a stream to dam and a 
mile and a quarter of piping to lay six feet underground 
to prevent the water freezing. It is only in very few places 
that we boast six feet of soil at all on the rock that forms 
the frame of Mother Earth here. Hence there was much 
blasting to do. But the task was accomplished, and by 
our own boys, and has successfully weathered our bitter 
winter. The last lap was run by an intensely interesting 
experiment. The assistant at Emmanuel Church in Bos- 
ton brought down a number of volunteer Boy Scouts to 
give their services on the commonplace task of digging 
the remainder of the trench necessary to complete the 
water supply. When they first arrived, our Northern out- 
side man, after looking at their clothes of the Boston cut, 
remarked, "Hm. You'd better give that crowd some 
softer job than digging." But they did the work, and a 
whole lot more besides. For their grit and jollity, and 
above all their readiness to tackle and see through such 
side tasks as unloading and stowing away some three 
hundred tons of coal were real "missionary" lessons. 

The ever-growing demand for doctors as the war 
dragged on made it harder and harder to man our far-off 
stations. The draft in America was the last straw, doctors 
having already been forbidden to leave England or Can- 
ada. Dr. Cha.rles Curtis had taken over Dr. Little's work 
at St. Anthony, and stood nobly by, getting special per- 



FORWARD STEPS 409 

mission to do so. Dr. West, who had succeeded our col- 
league, Dr. Mather Hare, at Harrington, when his wife's 
breakdown had obliged him to leave us, had already 
given us a year over his scheduled time, for he had ac- 
cepted work in India at the hands of those who had 
specially trained him for that purpose. 

We had been having considerable trouble in the accom- 
modation of the heavy batches of patients that came by 
the mail boat. They were left on the wharf when she 
steamed away, and only the floors of our treatment and 
waiting-rooms were available for their reception. For all 
could not possibly go into the wards, where children, and 
often very sick patients, were being cared for. The people 
around always stretched their hospitality to the limit, 
but this was a very undesirable method of housing sick 
persons temporarily. Owing to the generosity of a lady in 
New Bedford and other friends, we were enabled to meet 
the problem by the erection of a rest house, with first and 
second class accommodation. This was buUt in the spring 
of 1917, and has been a Godsend to many besides pa- 
tients. It makes people free to come to St. Anthony and 
stay and benefit by whatever it has to offer, without the 
feeling that they have no place to which they can go. 
Moreover, this hostel has been entirely self-supporting 
from the day that it opened, and every one who goes and 
comes has a good word for the rest house. It is run by one 
of our Labrador orphan boys, whose education was fin- 
ished in America, and "Johnnie," as every one calls him, 
is already a feature in the life of the place. 

Among the advances of the year 1918 must also be 
noted that more subscribers and subscriptions from local 
friends have been received than ever before. Our X-ray 
department has been added to. We have been able also 
to improve the roads, a thing greatly to be desired. 



410 A LABRADOR DOCTOR || 

Look where we will, we have nothing but gratitude 
that in the last year of a long and exhausting war, here 
in this far-away section of the world, the keynote has 
been one of progress. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

THE FUTURE OF THE MISSION 

What is the future of this Mission? I have once or twice 
been an unwilling listener to a discussion on this point. 
It has usually been in the smoking-room of a local mail 
steamer. The subtle humour of W. W. Jacobs has shown 
us that pessimism is an attribute of the village "pub" 
also. The alcoholic is always a prophet of doom; and the 
wish is often father to the thought. 

In our medical work in the wilds we have become a re- 
pository of some old instruments discarded on the death 
of their owners or cast aside by the advancing tide of 
knowledge. Seeing the ingenuity, time, and expense lav- 
ished on many of them, they would make a truly pathetic 
museum. Personally I prefer the habits of India to those 
of Egypt concerning the departed. If the Pharaoh of the 
Persecution could see his mummy being shown to tourists 
as a cheap side show, I am sure that he would vote for 
cremation if he had the choice over again. 

It sounds flippant in one who has devoted his life to this 
work to say, "Really I don't care what its future may 
be." I am content to leave the future with God. No true 
sportsman wants to linger on, a wretched handicap to the 
cause for which he once stood, like a fake hero with his 
peg leg and a black patch over one eye. The Christian 
choice is that of Achilles. Nature also teaches us that the 
paths of progress are marked by the discarded relics of 
what once were her corner-stones. The original Moses 
had the spirit of Christ when he said, "If Thou wilt, for- 
give their sin — and if not, I pray Thee, blot me out of 
Thy book." The heroic Paul was willing to be eliminated 



412 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

for the Kingdom of God. It seems to me that that atti- 
tude is the only credential which any Christian mission 
can give for its existence. If I felt that my work had 
accomplished all it could, I would "lay it down with a 
will." 

As in India and China the missionaries of the various 
societies are uniting to build up a native, national Church 
which would wish to assume the responsibility of caring 
for its own problems, so when the Government of this 
country is willing and able to take over the maintenance 
of the medical work, this Mission would have justified its 
existence by its elimination. All lines along which the 
Mission works should one day become self-eliminating. 
Until that time arrives I am satisfied that the Mission 
has great opportunities before it. I am an optimist, and 
feel certain that God will provide the means to continue 
as long as the need exists. 

Some believe that the future of this population depends 
solely on the attention paid to the development of the 
resources of the coast. Not only are its raw products more 
needed than ever, but even supposing that unscientific 
handling of them has depleted the supply, still there is 
ample to maintain a larger population than at present. 
This can only be when science and capital are introduced 
here, combined with an educated manhood fired by the 
spirit of cooperation. 

In large parts of China a famine to wipe out surplus 
population is apparently a periodical necessity. An or- 
phanage in India for similar reasons does not seem to be 
as rationally economic as one for the Labrador children. 
I never see a cliff face from which an avalanche has re- 
moved the supersoil and herbage without thinking in 
pity of the crowded sections of China, where tearing up 
even the roots of trees for fuel has permitted so much 



THE FUTURE OF THE MISSION 413 

arable land to be denuded by rains that the food supply 
gets smaller while the population grows larger. 

The future of all medical work depends on whether 
people want it and can arrange to get it paid for. If all the 
world become Christian Scientists, scientific — which we 
believe to be also Christian — healing will everywhere 
die a natural death — and possibly the people also. But 
history suggests that the healing art is one of considerable 
vitality. My own behef is that in the apparently ap- 
proaching socialistic age, medicine will be communized 
and provided by the State free to all. If education for the 
mind is, why not education for the body? 

Certain subtle and very vital psychic influences are 
probably the best stock in trade of the "Doctor of the old 
school." These quahties appear at present less likely to 
be "had for hire" in a Government official. The Chinese 
may yet return the missionary compliment by teaching 
us to adopt their method of paying the doctor only when 
and as long as the patient is cured. 

Out of the taxes, the major part of which is paid by the 
people of the outport districts in this Colony, the Gov- 
ernment provides free medical aid in the Capital, pre- 
sumably because those who have the spending of the 
money mostly reside there. The Mission provides it in the 
farthest off and poorest part of the country, Labrador 
and North Newfoundland, because there is no chance 
whatever at present for the poor people to obtain it other- 
wise. Our pro rata share of the taxes, if judged by the pal- 
try Government grant toward the work, would not pro- 
vide anything worth having. The people here pay far 
better in proportion to their ability for hospital privileges 
than they do in Boston or London; the Government pays 
a little, and the rest comes from the loving gifts of those 
who desire nothing better, when they know of real need, 
than to make sacrifices to meet it. 



414 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

One feels that the Chinese and Japanese and all na- 
tions will be able some day to pay for their own doctors, 
whether they do it on individualistic or communistic 
principles. In the present state of the world I believe the 
missionary enterprise to be entirely desirable, or I would 
not be where I am. But being a Christian with a little 
faith, I hope that it may not be so forever. If anything 
will stimulate to better methods, it is example, not pre- 
cept, and perhaps the best work of this and all missions 
will be their reflex influences on Governments through 
the governed. 

To carry on the bare essentials of this work an endow- 
ment of at least a million dollars is necessary. Toward this 
a hundred and sixty thousand dollars is all that has been 
contributed, and in addition we can count annually upon 
a small Government grant. Even if this million dollars 
were given, it would still leave several thousand dollars 
to be raised by voluntary subscription each year, a 
healthy thing for the life of any charitable work. On the 
other hand, the certainty of being able to meet the main 
bills is an economy in nerve energy, in time and in money. 

Among our patients brought in one season to St. An- 
thony Hospital was the mother of ten children on whom 
an emergency operation for appendicitis had to be done 
— the first time in her life that a doctor had ever tended 
her. She came from a very poor home, for besides her 
large family her husband had been all his life handi- 
capped by a serious deformity of one leg caused by a fall. 
She reminded me of how some years before a traveller 
had left her the rug from his dog sledge, as, without any 
bedclothes, she was again about to give birth to a child; 
how she had actually been unable at times to turn over 
in bed, because her personal clothing had frozen solid to 
the wall of the one-roomed hut in which she lived. ; 



THE FUTURE OF THE MISSION 415 

In April, 1906, in northern Newfoundland I found a 
young mother near St. Anthony. She was twenty-six 
years old, suffering from acute rheumatic fever, lying in 
a fireless loft, on a rickety bedstead with no bedclothes. 
She had only one shoddy black dress to her name, and 
no underwear to keep her warm in bed in a house like 
that. The floor was littered with debris, including a num- 
ber of hard buns which she could not now eat, but which 
some charitable neighbour had sent her. She had a wiz- 
ened baby of seven months, which every now and then 
she was trying to feed by raising herself on one elbow and 
forcing bread and water pap, moistened with the merest 
suspicion of condensed milk, down its throat. None of her 
four previous children had lived so long. She had been 
under my care three years before for sailor's scurvy. Her 
present illness lasted only a week, and in spite of all that 
we could do, she died. 

The desire of the people to be mutually helpful is 
undoubted, whether it is to each other or to some "out- 
sider" like ourselves. I question if in the so-called centres 
of civilization the following incident can be surpassed as 
evidencing this aspect of their character. 

In a little Labrador village called Deep Water Creek I 
was called in one day to see a patient : an old Englishman, 
who was reported to have had "a bad place this twelve- 
month." As I was taken into the tiny cottage, a bright- 
faced, black-bearded man greeted me. Three children 
were playing on the hearth with a younger man, evi- 
dently their father. "No, Doctor, they are n't ours," re- 
plied my host, in answer to my question. "But us took 
Sam as our own when he was born, and his mother lay 
dead. These be his little ones. You remember Kate, his 
wife, what died in hospital." 

After the cup of hot tea so thoughtfully provided, I 



416 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

said, "Skipper John, let's get out and see the old Eng- 
lishman." 

"No need, Doctor. He's upstairs in bed." 

Upstairs was the triangular space between the roof and 
the ceiling of the ground floor. At each end was a tiny- 
window, and the whole area, windows included, had been 
divided longitudinally by a single thickness of hand- 
sawn lumber. Both windows were open, a cool breeze 
was blowing through, and a bright paper pasted on the 
wall gave a cheerful impression. One corner was shut off 
by a screen of cheap cheesecloth. Sitting bolt upright on 
a low bench, and leaning against the partition, was a very 
aged woman, staring fixedly ahead out of blind eyes, and 
ceaselessly monotoning what was meant for a hymn. 
No head was visible among the rude collection of bed- 
clothes. 

"Uncle Solomon, it's the Doctor," I called. The mass 
of clothes moved, and a trembling old hand came out to 
meet mine. 

"No pain. Uncle Solomon, I hope.'^" 

"No pain. Doctor, thank the good Lord, and Skip- 
per John. He took us in when the old lady and I were 
starving." 

The terrible cancer had so extended its ravages that 
the reason for the veiled corner was obvious, and also for 
the effective ventilation. 

"He suffers a lot. Doctor, though he won't own it," 
now chimed in the old woman. 

When the interview was over, I was left standing in a 
brown study till I heard Skipper John's voice calling me. 
As I descended the ladder he said: "We're so grateful 
you comed. Doctor. The poor old creatures won't last 
long. But thanks are n't dollars. I have n't a cent in the 
world now. The old people have taken what little we had 



THE FUTURE OF THE MISSION 417 

put by. But if I gets a skin t' winter, I '11 try and pay you 
for your visit anyhow." 

"Skipper John, what ^-elation are those people to you? " 

"Well, no relation 'zactly." 

"Do they pay nothing at all?" 

"Them has nothing," he replied. 

"What made you take them in?" 

"They was homeless, and the old lady was already 
blind." 

"How long have they been with you?" 

"Just twelve months come Saturday." 

I found myself standing in speechless admiration in the 
presence of this man. I thought then, and I still think, 
that I had received one of my largest fees. 

Ours is primarily a medical mission, and nothing that 
may have been stated in this book with reference to other 
branches of the work is meant in any way to detract from 
what to us as doctors is the basic reason for our being 
here, though we mean ours to be prophylactic as well as 
remedial medicine. 

St. Anthony having so indisputably become the head- 
quarters of the hospital stations, there can be but one 
answer to the question of the advisability of its closing 
its doors summer or winter in the days to come. For not 
only is our largest hospital located there — its scope due 
in great measure to the reputation gained for it by Dr. 
Little's splendid services, and continued by Dr. Curtis 
— but also the Children's Home, our school, machine 
shop, the headquarters of various industrial enterprises, 
and lastly a large storehouse to be used in future as a 
distributing centre for the supplies of the general Mis- 
sion. Moreover, the population of the environs of St. 
Anthony, owing to their numbers and the fact that they 
can profit by the employment given by the Mission, 



418 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

should be able increasingly to assist in the maintenance 
of this hospital, though a large number of its clinic is 
drawn from distant parts. These patients come not only 
from Labrador, the Straits of Belle Isle, and southern 
Newfoundland, but we have had under our care Syri- 
ans, Russians, Scandinavians, Frenchmen, and naturally 
Americans and Canadians, seamen from schooners en- 
gaged in. the Labrador fishery. 

Harrington Hospital, located on the Canadian Labra- 
dor, must for many years to come depend on outside sup- 
port. I am Lloyd Georgian enough to feel that taxation 
should presuppose the obligation to look after the bodies 
of the taxed. The Quebec Government gives neither vote, 
representation, adequate mail service, nor any public 
health grant for the long section of the coast which it 
claims to govern, that lies west of the Point des Eskimo. 
It is to my mind a severe stricture on their qualifications 
as legislators. That hospital should, we believe, be ade- 
quately subsidized and kept open summer and winter. 
At present we have to thank the Labrador Medical Mis- 
sion, which is the Canadian branch of the International 
Grenfell Association, for their generous and continued 
support of this station. 

Battle Harbour and Indian Harbour Hospitals can 
never be anything but summer stations, owing to their 
geographical positions on islands in frozen seas, on which 
islands there is practically no population during the win- 
ter months. But gifts and grants sufficient to maintain a 
doctor at Northwest River Cottage Hospital, and one if 
possible in Lewis Bay, winter supplements to these sum- 
mer hospitals, are to my thinking more than justifiable. 

As to the future of our hospital stations at Pilley's 
Islands, Spotted Islands, and Forteau, that will depend 
upon the changing demands of local conditions. That the 



THE FUTURE OF THE MISSION 419 

need of medical assistance exists is unquestionable, as is 
evidenced from the many appeals which I receive to start 
hospitals or supply doctors in districts at present utterly 
incapable of obtaining such help. 

One still indispensable requisite in our scattered field of 
work is a hospital steamer. In fact, not a few of us think 
that the Strathcona is the keystone of the Mission. She 
reaches those who need our help most and at times when 
they cannot afford to leave home and seek it. Her func- 
tions are innumerable. She is our eyepiece to keep us 
cognizant of our opportunities. She both treats and car- 
ries the sick and feeds the hospitals. She enables us to 
distribute our charity efficiently. The invaluable gifts of 
clothing which the Labrador Needlework Guild and other 
friends send us could never be used at all as love would 
wish, unless the Strathcona were available to enlarge the 
area reached. In spite of all this, those who would quibble 
over trifles claim that she is the only craft on record that 
rolls at dry-dock! Her functions are certainly varied, but 
perhaps the oddest which I have ever been asked to per- 
form was an incident which I have often told. One day, 
after a long stream of patients had been treated, a young 
man with a great air of secrecy said that he wanted to 
see me very privately. 

"I wants to get married. Doctor," he confided when 
we were alone. 

"Well, that's something in which I can't help you. 
Won't any of the girls round here have you.'*" 

"Oh! it is n't that. There's a girl down North I fancies, 
but I 'm shipped to a man here for the summer, and can't 
get away. Would n't you just propose to her for me, and 
bring her along as you comes South.''" 

The library would touch a very limited field if it were 
not for the hospital ship. She carries half a hundred trav- 



420 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

elling libraries each year. She finds out the derelict chil- 
dren and brings them home. She is often a court of law, 
trying to dispense justice and help right against might. 
She has enabled us to serve not only men, but their ships 
as well; and many a helping hand she has been able to 
lend to men in distress when hearts were anxious and 
hopes growing faint. In a thousand little ways she is just 
as important a factor in preaching the message of love. 
To-day she is actually loaned for her final trip, before 
going into winter quarters, to a number of heads of fam- 
ilies, who are thus enabled to bring out fuel for their win- 
ter fires from the long bay just south of the hospital. 

Her plates are getting thin. They were never anything 
but three-eighths-inch steel, and we took a thousand 
pounds of rust out of her after cabin alone this spring. 
She leaks a little — and no iron ship should. It will cost 
two thousand dollars to put her into repair again for 
future use. Money is short now, but when asked about 
the future of the Mission I feel that whatever else will be 
needed for many years to come, the hospital ship at least 
cannot possibly be dispensed with. 

The child is potential energy, the father of the future 
man, and the future state; and the children of this coun- 
try are integral, determining factors in the future of this 
Mission. The children who are turned out to order by 
institutions seem sadly deficient, both in ability to cope 
with life and in the humanities. The "home" system, as 
at Quarrier's in Scotland, is a striking contrast, and per- 
sonally I shall vote for the management of orphanages 
on home lines every time. This is not a concession to 
Dickens, whose pictures of Bumble I hope and believe 
apply only to the dark ages in which Dickens lived; 
but historically they are not yet far enough removed 
for me to advocate Government orphanages, though our 



THE FUTURE OF THE MISSION 421 

Government schools are an advance on Dotheboys 
Hall. 

The human body is the result of physical causes; breed- 
ing tells as surely as it does in dogs or cows, and the prob- 
ability of defects in the offspring of poverty and of lust 
is necessarily greater than in well-bred, well-fed, well- 
environed children. The proportion of mentally and mor- 
ally deficient children that come to us absolutely demon- 
strates this fact; and the love needed to see such children 
through to the end is more comprehensive than the mere 
sentiment of having a child in the home, and infinitely 
more than the desire to have the help which he can bring. 

The Government allows us fifty-two dollars a year 
toward the expense of a child whose father is dead; 
nothing if the mother is dead, or if the father is alive but 
had better be dead. It would be wiser if each case could 
be judged on its merits by competent officials. But we 
believe it is a blessing to a community to have the oppor- 
tunity of finding the balance. 

Tested by its output and the returns to the country, 
our orphanage has amply justified itself. One new life 
resultant from the outlay of a few dollars would class the 
investment as gilt-edged if graded merely in cash. The 
community which sows a neglected childhood reaps a 
whirlwind in defective manhood. 

In view of these facts — to leave out of consideration 
my earnest personal desire — there can never be any 
question in my mind as to the imperative necessity of the 
Mission's continuance of the work for derelict children. 
This conclusion seems to me safeguarded by the fact that 
all nations are placing increasing emphasis on "the child 
in the midst of them." 

When Solomon chose wisdom as the gift which he most 
desired, the Bible tells us that it was pleasing to God. 



422 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

St. Paul holds out the hope that one day we shall know 
as we are known. But there is a vast difference between 
knowledge and being wise. In fact, from the New Testa- 
ment itself we are led to believe that the devils knew far 
more than even the Disciples. 

The school is an essential part of the orphanage. Seeing 
that the village children needed education just as much 
as those for whom we were more directly responsible, and 
realizing the value to both of the cooperation, and that 
the denominational system which still persists in the 
country is a factor for division and not for unity, it be- 
came obviously desirable for us to provide such a bond. 
Friends made the building possible. The generosity of a 
lady in Chicago in practically endowing it has, we feel, 
secured its future. We have now a proper building, three 
teachers, a graded school, modem appliances for teaching, 
and vastly superior results. In these days when the ex- 
penditure of every penny seems a widow's mitej one wel- 
comes the encouragement of facts such as these to enable 
one to "carry on." 

Modem pedagogy has brought to the attention of even 
the man in the street the realization that education con- 
sists not merely in its accepted scholastic aspect, but also 
that training of the eye and hand which in turn fosters 
the larger development of the mind. In the latter sense 
our people are far from imeducated. Taking this aptitude 
of theirs as a starting-point, some twelve years ago we 
began our industrial department, first by giving out skin 
work in the North, and later started other branches under 
Miss Jessie Luther, who subsequently gave many years 
of service to the coast. 

The cooperative movement is the same question seen 
from another angle, and is almost contemporaneous with 
our earliest hospitals. 



THE FUTURE OF THE MISSION 423 

It is not unnatural that man, realizing that he is him- 
self Hke "the grass that to-morrow is cast into the oven," 
should worry over the permanency of the things on which 
he has spent himself. Though Christ especially warns us 
against this anxiety, rehgious people have been the great- 
est sinners in laying more emphasis upon to-morrow than 
to-day. The element which makes most for longevity is 
always interesting, even if longevity is often a mistake. 
Almost every old parish church in England maintains 
some skeleton of bygone efiforts which once met real 
needs and were tokens of real love. 

The future is a long way off — that future when Christ's 
Kingdom comes on earth in the consecrated hearts and 
wills of all mankind, when all the superimposed efforts 
will be unnecessary. But love builds for a future, how- 
ever remote; and at present we see no other way than to 
work for it, and know of no better means than to insure 
the permanency of the hospitals, orphanage, school, and 
the industrial and cooperative enterprises, thus to hasten, 
however little, the coming of Christ in Labrador. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

MY RELIGIOUS LIFE 

No one can write his real religious life with pen or pencil. 
It is written only in actions, and its seal is our character, 
not our orthodoxy. Whether we, our neighbour, or God is 
the judge, absolutely the only value of our "religious" 
life to ourselves or to any one is what it fits us for and 
enables us to do. Creeds, when expressed only in words, 
clothes, or abnormal lives, are daily growing less accept- 
able as passports to Paradise. What my particular intel- 
lect can accept cannot commend me to God. His "well 
done" is only spoken to the man who "wills to do His 
will." 

We map the world out into black and white patches 
for "heathen" and "Christian" — as if those who made 
the charts believed that one section possessed a monopoly 
of God's sonship. Europe was marked white, which is to- 
day comment enough on this division. A black friend of 
mine used often to remind me that in his country the 
Devil was white. 

My own religious experiences divide my life into three 
periods. As a boy at school, and as a young man at hospi- 
tal, the truth or untruth of Christianity as taught by the 
churches did not interest me enough to devote a thought 
to it. It was neither a disturbing nor a vital influence in 
my life. My mother was my ideal of goodness. I have 
never known her speak an angry or unkind word. Sitting 
here looking back on over fifty years of life, I cannot pick 
out one thing to criticize in my mother. 

What did interest me was athletics. Like most Eng- 
lish boys I almost worshipped physical accomplishments. 



MY RELIGIOUS LIFE 425 

I had the supremest contempt for clothes except those 
designed for action or comfort. Since no saint apparently 
ever wore trousers, or appeared to care about football 
knickers, I never supposed that they could be the same 
flesh as myself. It was always a barrier between me and 
the parsons and religious persons generally that they 
affected clothing which dubbed my ideals "worldly." It 
was even a barrier between myself and the Christ that 
I could not think of Him in flannels or a gymnasium suit. 
At that time I should have considered such an idea blas- 
phemous — whatever that meant. As soon as religious 
services ceased to be compulsory for me, I only attended 
them as a concession to others. The prime object of the 
prayers and lessons did not appear to be that they might 
be understood. So far as I could see, common sense and 
plain natural feelings were at a discount. A long heritage 
of an eager, restless spirit left me uninterested in "hom- 
ihes," and aided by the "dim religious light," I was en- 
abled to sleep through both long prayers and sermons. 
Justice forces me to add that the two endless hours of 
"prep" lessons after tea had very much the same effect 
upon me. 

At the request of my mother I once went to take a class 
at the Sunday School. These were for the "poor only" in 
England in those days. Little effort was expended on 
making them attractive. I recall nothing but disgust at 
the dirty urchins with whom I had to associate for half 
an hour. An incident which happened on the death of one 
of the boys at my father's school interested me tempora- 
rily in religion. The boy's father happened to be a dis- 
senter, and our vicar refused to allow the gates of the 
parish churchyard to be opened to enable the funeral cor- 
tege to enter. My chum had only a legal right to be buried 
in the yard. The coflSn had therefore to be lifted over the 



426 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

wall and as the church was locked, father conducted the 
service in the open air. His words at the grave-side gave a 
touch of reality to religion, and still more so did his walk- 
ing down the aisle out of church the following Sunday 
when the vicar referred to the destructive influence of 
anything that lent colour to dissent. Later when father 
threw up the school for the far more onerous and less 
remunerative task of chaplain at the London Hospital, 
even I realized that religion meant something. Indeed, it 
was that tax on his sensitive, nervous brain that brought 
his life to its early close. No man ever had a more gener- 
ous and soft-hearted father. He never refused us any 
reasonable request, and very few unreasonable ones, and 
allowed us an amount of self-determination enjoyed by 
few. How deeply and how often have I regretted that I 
did not understand him better. His brilHant scholarship, 
and the friends that it brought around him, his ability 
literally to speak Greek and Latin as he could German 
and French, his exceptionally developed mental as com- 
pared with his physical gifts, were undoubtedly the rea- 
sons that a very ordinary English boy could not appreciate 
him. 

At fourteen years of age, at Marlborough School, I was 
asked if I wished to be confirmed. Every boy of that age 
was. It permitted one to remain when "the kids went out 
after first service." It added dignity, like a football cap or 
a mustache. All I remember about it was bitterly resent- 
ing having to "swat up" the Catechism out of school 
hours. I counted, however, on the examiner being easy, 
and he was. I am an absolute believer in boys making a 
definite decision to follow the Christ; and that in the 
hands of a really keen Christian man the rite of confirma- 
tion is very valuable. The call which gets home to a boy's 
heart is the call to do things. If only a boy can be led to 



MY RELIGIOUS LIFE 427 

s^ that the following of Christ demands a real knight- 
hood, and that true chivalry is Christ's service, he will 
want all the rites and ceremonies that either proclaim his 
allegiance or promise him help and strength to live up 
to it. 

What I now believe that D. L. Moody did for me was 
just to show that under all the shams and externals of 
religion was a vital call in the world for things that I 
could do. This marks the beginning of the second period 
of my religious development. He helped me to see myself 
as God sees the "unprofitable servant," and to be 
ashamed. He started me working for all I was worth, 
and made religion real fun — a new field brimming with 
opportunities. With me the pendulum swung very far. 
The evangelical to my mind had a monopoly of infallible 
truth. A Roman Catholic I regarded as a relic of medise- 
valism; while almost a rigour went down my spine when 
a man told me that he was a "Unitarian Christian." 
Hyphenation was loyalty compared to that. I mention 
this only because it shows how I can now understand 
intolerance and dogmatism in others. Yes, I must have 
been "very impossible," for then I honestly thought that 
I knew it all. 

About this time I began to be interested in reading my 
Bible, and I learned to appreciate my father's expositions 
of it. At prayers he always translated into the vernacular 
from the original of either the Old or the New Testa- 
ment. To me he seemed to know every sense of every 
Greek word in any setting. Ever since I have been satis- 
fied to use an English version, knowing that I cannot 
improve on the words chosen by the various learned 
translators. 

Because I owed so much to evangelical teachers, it 
worried me for a long while that I could not bring myself 



428 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

to argue with my boys about their intellectual attitude to 
Christ. My Sunday class contained several Jews whom 
I loved. I respected them more because they made no 
verbal professions. I have seen Turkish religionists danc- 
ing and whirling in Asia Minor at their prayers. I have 
seen much emotional Christianity, and I fully realize the 
value of approaching men on their emotional side. A 
demonstrative preacher impresses large crowds of people 
at once. But all the same, I have learned from many dis- 
illusionments to be afraid of overdoing emotionalism in 
religion. Summing up the evidence of men's Christlike- 
ness by their characters, as I look back down my long list 
of loved and honoured helpers and friends, I am certainly 
safe in saying that I at least should judge that no section 
of Christ's Church has any monopoly of Christ's spirit; 
and that I should like infinitely less to be examined on my 
own dogmatic theology than I should thirty-five years 
ago. Combined with this goes the fact that though I know 
the days of my stay on earth are greatly reduced, I seem to 
be less rather than more anxious about "the morrow.'* 
For though time has rounded off the corners of my con- 
ceit, experience of God's dealing with such an unworthy 
midget as myself has so strengthened the foundations on 
which faith stood, that Christ now means more to me as 
a living Presence than when I laid more emphasis on the 
dogmas concerning Him. 

This chapter would not be complete without an en- 
deavour to face the task of trying to answer the questions 
so often asked: "What is your position now.^ Do you 
still believe as you did when you first decided to serve 
Christ?" I am still a communicant member "in good 
standing" of the Episcopal Church. One hopes that one's 
religious ideas grow like the rest of one's life. It is fools 
who are said to rush in where angels fear to tread. The 



MY RELIGIOUS LIFE 429 

most powerful Christian churches in the world, the Greek 
and the Roman, recognizing the great dangers threaten- 
ing, have countered by stereotyping the answer for all 
time, assuming all responsibility, and permitting no indi- 
vidual freedom in the matter. The numbers of their ad- 
herents testify to how vast a proportion of mankind the 
course appeals. And yet we are sons of God — and at our 
best value freedom in every department of our being — 
spirit as well as mind and body. George Adam Smith 
says: "The great causes of God and humanity are not 
defeated by the hot assaults of the Devil, but by the slow, 
crushing, glacier-like mass of thousands and thousands 
of indifferent nobodies. God's causes are never destroyed 
by being blown up, but by being sat upon. It is not the 
violent and anarchical whom we have to fear in the war 
for human progress, but the slow, the staid, the respect- 
able; and the danger of these lies in their real skepticism. 
Though it would abhor articulately confessing that God 
does nothing, it virtually means so by refusing to share 
manifest opportunities for serving Him." 

Feeble and devious as my own footsteps have been 
since my decision to follow Jesus Christ, I believe more 
than ever that this is the only real adventure of life. No 
step in life do I even compare with that one in permanent 
satisfaction. I deeply regret that I did not take it sooner. 
I do not feel that it mattered much whether I chose medi- 
cine for an occupation, or law, or education, or commerce, 
or any other way to justify my existence by working for 
a living as every honest man should. But if there is one 
thing about which I never have any question, it is that 
the decision and endeavour to follow the Christ does for 
men what nothing else on earth can. Without stultifying 
our reason, it develops all that makes men godlike. Christ 
claimed that it was the only way to find out truth. 



430 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

To me, enforced asceticism, vows of celibacy, de- 
nunciation of pleasures innocent in themselves, intel- 
lectual monopoly of interpretation of things past or 
present, written or unwritten, are travesties of common 
sense, which is to me the Voice within. Not being a 
philosopher, I do not classify it, but I listen to it, be- 
cause I believe it to be the Voice of God. That is the 
first point which I have no fear in putting on record. 

The extraordinary revelations of some Power outside 
ourselves leading and guiding and helping and chasten- 
ing are, I am certain, really the ordinary experiences of 
every man who is willing to accept the fact that we are 
sons of God. Only a child, however, who submits to his 
father can expect to enjoy or understand his dealings. If 
we look into our everyday life we cannot fail to see that 
God not only allows but seeks our cooperation in the 
establishment of His Kingdom. So the second funda- 
mental by which I stand is the certainty of a possible 
real and close relationship between man and God. Not 
one qualm assails my intellect or my intuition when I 
say that I know absolutely that God is my Father. To 
live "as seeing Him who is invisible" is my one ideal 
which embraces all the lesser ideals of my life. 

It has been my lot in life to have to stand by many 
death-beds, and to be called in to dying men and women 
almost as a routine in my profession. Yet I am increas- 
ingly convinced that their spirits never die at all. I am 
sure that there is no real death. Death is no argument 
against, but rather for, life. Eternal life is the complement 
of all my unsatisfied ideals; and experience teaches me 
that the belief in it is a greater incentive to be useful and 
good than any other I know. 

I have read "Raymond" with great interest. I am 
neither capable nor willing to criticize those who, with 



MY RELIGIOUS LIFE 431 

the deductive ability of such men as Sir Oliver Lodge, 
are brave enough and unselfish enough to devote their 
talents to pioneering in a field that certainly needs and 
merits more scientific investigation, seeing that it has 
possibihties of such great moment to mankind. 

The experiences on which rest one's own convictions 
of continuing life are of an entirely different nature. 
Even though the first and personal reason may seem 
foolish, it is because I desire it so much. This is a natural 
passion, common to all human beings. Experience con- 
vinces me that such longings are purposeful and do not 
go unsatisfied. 

No, we do not know everything yet; and perhaps the 
critic is a shallower fool than he judges to be the patient 
delvers into the unknown beyond. The evidence on 
which our deductions have been based through the ages 
may suddenly be proven fallible after all. It may be that 
there is no such thing as matter. Chemists and physicists 
now admit that is possible. The spiritual may be far 
more real than the material, in spite of the cocksure con- 
ceit of the current science of 1918. Immortality may be 
the complement of mortality, as water becomes steam, 
and steam becomes power, and power becomes heat, and 
heat becomes light. The conclusion that life beyond is 
the conservation of energy of life here may be as scien- 
tific as that great natural law for material things. I see 
knowledge become service, service become joy. I see fear 
prohibit glands from secreting, hope bring back colour 
to the face and tone to the blood. I see something not 
material make Jekyl into Hyde; and thank God, make 
Hyde over into Jekyl again, when birch rods and iron 
bars have no effect whatever. I have seen love do phys- 
ical things which the mere intellectual convictions can- 
not — make hearts beat and eyes sparkle, that would 



432 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

not respond even to digitalis and strychnine. I claim 
that the boy is justified in saying that his kite exists 
in the heaven, even though it is out of sight and the 
string leads round the corner, on no other presumption 
than that he feels it tugging. I prefer to stand with 
Moses in his belief in the Promised Land, and that we 
can reach it, than to believe that the Celestial City is a 
mirage. 

This attempted analysis of my religious life has re- 
vealed to me two great changes in my position toward 
its intellectual or dogmatic demands, and both of them 
are reflections of the ever rightly changing attitude of the 
defenders of our Christian faith. "Tempora mutantur et 
nos mutamus in illis." Christians should not fret because 
they cannot escape adapting themselves to the envi- 
ronment of 1918 — which is no longer that of 918, or 
18. The one and only hope for any force, Christianity 
no less than others, is its ability to adapt itseK to all 
time. 

I still study my Bible in the morning and scribble on 
the margin the lessons which I get out of the portion. I 
can only do it by using a new copy each time I finish, be- 
cause it brings new thoughts according to the peculiar 
experiences, tasks, needs, and environments of the day. 
I change I know. It does not — and yet it does — for 
we see the old truths in new lights. That to me is the glory 
of the Scriptures. Somehow it suits itself always to my de- 
veloping needs. Christ did not teach as did other teachers. 
He taught for all time. We find out that our attitude to 
everything changes, to the things that give us pleasure 
and to those that give us pain. It is but a sign of healthy 
evolution (in this chapter, I suppose I should call it 
"grace") that the great churches have ceased to condemn 
their leaders who are unsound on points which once spelt 



MY RELIGIOUS LIFE 433 

fagot and stake. To-day predestination no longer involves 
the same reaction, even if dropped into a conference of 
selected "Wee Frees." The American section of the Epis- 
copal Church has omitted to insist on our publicly and 
periodically declaring that we must have a correct view 
of three Incomprehensibles, or be damned, as is still the 
case in our Church of England. 

I am writing of my religion. The churches are now teach- 
ing that religion is action, not diction. There was a time 
when I could work with only one section of the Church 
of God. Thank God, it was a very brief period, but I 
weep for it just the same. Now I can not only work with 
any section, but worship with them also. If there is error 
in their intellectual attitudes, it is to God they stand, 
not to me. Doubtless there is just as much error in mine. 
To me, he is the best Christian who "judges not." To 
claim a monopoly of Christian religion for any church, 
looked at from the point of view of following Jesus Christ, 
is ridiculous. So I find that I have changed, changed in the 
importance which I place on what others think and upon 
what I myself think. 

Unless a Christian is a witness in his life, his opinions 
do not matter two pins to God or man. Of course, to-day 
we should not burn Savonarola, any more than we should 
actually crucify that brave old fisherman, Peter, or ridi- 
cule a Gordon or a Livingstone, or assassinate a Lincoln 
or a Phillips Brooks, even with our tongues, though they 
differed from us in their view of what the Christian re- 
ligion really needs. Oh, of course we should n't! 

Perhaps my change spells more and not less faith in 
the Saviour of the world. As I love the facts of life more, 
I care less for fusty commentators. As I see more of 
Christ's Kving with us all the days, I care less for argu- 
ments about His death. I have no more doubt that He 



4S4 A LABRADOR DOCTOR 

lives in His world to-day than that I do. Why should I 
blame myself because more and more my mind empha- 
sizes the fact that it is because He lives, and only so far 
as He lives in me, that I shall live also? 



THE END 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Agriculture, in Labrador, unsuccess- 
ful, 217, 290. 

Alaska, reindeer experiment in, 291; 
294-295. 

Albert, the, hospital ship of Dr. Gren- 
fell, 125, 188, 189. 

Among the Deep-Sea Fishers, maga- 
zine, 280. 

Andrews, Dr. Joseph, eye-specialist, 
357. 

Archibald, Sir William, chairman of 
the Royal National Mission to 
Deep-Sea Fishermen, 362. 

Armstrong, Dr. Seymour, his work at 
St. Anthony, 367. 

Arnold, Thomas, of Rugby, 14. 

Athletics, Grenfell's fondness of, 21, 
32, 44, 50, 51, 53, 81, 424. 

Bailey, Florence, nurse, 326. 
Barnett, Samuel, of Mile End, head 

of Toynbee House, 83. 
Barter system, the evils of, 131, 132, 

133-138, 215-217. 
Bartlett, Captain, father of "Captain 

Bob," 136. 
Battle Harbour, Newfoundland, site 

of hospital, 126, 162, 165, 169, 

193. 
Beattie, Arthur, 192. 
Beetz, Mr., 239. 

Begbie, Harold, Twice-Born Men, 101. 
Bell, Dr. Alexander Graham, 338. 
Belle Isle, the Straits of, Labrador, 

126, 127, 140, 250. 
Besant, Mrs. Annie, associated with 

Charles Bradlaugh, 81, 82. 
Blandford, Captain Samuel, 159, 172. 
Bobardt, Dr. Arthur, 126, 159-162. 
Booth, Walter, of New York, 370, 371. 
Bowditch, William, 275. 
Boys' Brigade, the, 101, 353. 
Bradlaugh, Charles, religious radical, 

81-82. 

Cabot, John, 120. 

Carpenter, Rev. C. C, 241, 242. 

Carrel, Dr. Alexis, in France, 397. 



Cartier, Jacques, 158. 

Cartwright, George, 158. 

Catholic Cadet Corps, the, 159, 353. 

Cattle-raising in Labrador unsuccess- 
ful, 290. 

Cawardine, Miss, nurse, 126. 

Charity, prophylactic, more impor- 
tant than remedial, 235. 

Cheever, Colonel David, 389. 

Chester, England, birthplace of Gren- 
fell, 1, 2. 

Chidley, Cape, Labrador, 164, 207, 
208. 

Children's Home, the, 244-253. 

Church Lads Brigade, the, 159, 353. 

Clark, Sir Andrew, doctor, 65. 

Cluett, George B., of Troy, N.Y., 347, 
348. 

Cook, Captain, 128, 340, 341. 

Cooperative system, the, 215-225. 

Corner, the, magazine, 242. 

Crookhaven, seat of a dispensary and 
social centre, 107. 

Crowe, Harry, lumber operator, 370. 

Curtis, Dr. Charles, 408. 

Curtis, Lieutenant Roger, quoted, 
158. 

Curwen, Dr. Elliott, 126. 

Curzon-Howe, Lady, 191. 

Curzon-Howe, Lord, 191. 

Cutter, Marion, librarian, 266. 

Daly, Professor Reginald, head of De- 
partment of Geology at Harvard 
University, quoted, 157, 158. 

Dampier, William, 191. 

Davis Inlet, Labrador, 154, 155. 

Dawson, Sir Betrand, 388. 

Dee, the River, 2, 4. 

Delano, Eugene, head of Brown 
Brothers, bankers, 358. 

Denominationalism, evils of, 264, 269, 
353. 

Dogs, Labrador, ferocity of, 198, 289. 
290. 

Domino Run, Labrador, natural har- 
bour, 120. 

Drake, Sir Francis, 191. 



438 



INDEX 



Duke of Connaught, Governor-Gen- 
eral of Canada, 382. 

Durand, Mrs. Charles, aunt of Mrs. 
Grenfell, 336. 

Education in Labrador: schools de- 
nominational, 254, 269; Grenf ell's 
school, 257-264; moving libraries, 
266; founding of undenominational 
boarding school, 268. 

Edward VII, King, Grenfell's private 
audience with, 284, 285. 

Edwards, Antiguan lecturer of the 
Christian Evidence Society, 82, 84, 
85. 

Emily Beaver Chamberlain Memorial 
iiosoitfil 404 

English, Robert, of Yale College, 277, 
278. 

Eskimos, the, Grenfell's work with, 
129-136; original natives of Labra- 
dor, 140, 141; Valentine, king of, 
155; suffering of, 155. 

Evans, John, worker at St. Anthony, 
405. 

Fallon, Dr. Louis, 405. 

Faroe Islands, the, 184. 

Fenwick, Harry, 69. 

"Fisher Lads' Letter- Writing Asso- 
ciation," 97. 

Fishermen's Institute, 183. 

Ford, George, factor of Hudson Bay 
Company, 141, 155, 242, 277, 327. 

Fox Farm, at St. Anthony, 238-240. 

George V, King, 352, 353. 

Gladstone, W. E., 106. 

Gosling, Mrs. W. E., 370. 

Gould, Albert, volunteer helper of 

Grenfell, 318, 321. 
Great Cop, the, 4. 
Greenshields, Julia, editor of Among 

the Deep-Sea Fishers, 280. 
Grenfell, Algernon, brother of W. T. 

G., 7, 8, 9, 10. 
Grenfell, Algernon Sydney, father of 

W. T. G., 8, 9, 11, 12. 
Grenfell, Cecil, brother of W. T. G., 7. 
Grenfell, Eonloch Pascoe, son of W. T. 

G. 342. 
Grenfell, Maurice, brother of W. T. G., 

7. 
Grenfell, Pascoe, of Bank of England, 

161. 



Grenfell, Rosamond Loveday, daugh- 
ter of W. T. G., 342. 
Grenfell, WiKred Thomason, birth, 1; 
ancestry, 1, 2; early days, 2-14; 
school life, 15-36; study of natural 
objects, 34-36; choice of medical 
profession, 37-39; college life, 41-44; 
interest in athletics, 44; religious 
awakening, 44-46; Sunday-school 
class and slum work, 46-53; summer 
cruises, 53-57; camping with boys, 
57-63; germination of democratic 
tendencies, 63; interne in London 
Hospital, 64-87; father's death, 73; 
humanitarian ideals, 78, 79; hatred 
of liquor traffic, 79; association with 
religious radicals in East London, 81- 
86; cosmopolitan life, 85; member 
of College of Physicians and Royal . 
College of Surgeons of England, 87; 
first work in fisheries of North Sea, 
88-98; his religion intensely social, 
99-101; medical officer in boys' 
summer-camps, 102, 103; develop- 
ment of work in North Sea and off 
Irish coast, 104-114; preparation 
and departure for America, 113-118; 
first summer in Labrador, 119-125; 
success in Labrador, 125; return to 
England, 126; second voyage to 
Labrador, 126; founding of cottage 
hospitals, 126; visits to Moravian 
Brethren and work among Eskimos, 
128-138; lecturing and soliciting in 
southern Newfoundland and Can- 
ada, 159-162; cruising north, 163- 
170; experience with seal fishery, 
173-182; trip to Iceland, 183-187; 
holiday with Treves on Scilly Is- 
lands, 187, 188; third voyage to 
Newfoundland, 192, 193; requested 
to establish a winter station at St. 
Anthony, 194; winter at St. An- 
thony, 197-214; institution of coop- 
erative system, 218-225; institution 
of saw-mill in North Newfoundland, 
226-238; fox farm at St. Anthony, 
238, 239; founding of The Children's 
Home, 244; founding of common 
school, 257-265; moving libraries, 
266; arrangement of two-cent postal 
rate, 281, 282; awarded honorary 
degree of Doctor of Medicine of 
Oxford, 282; received honorary de- 
gree of Doctor of Laws in America, 



INDEX 



439 



283; received Companionship in the 
Order of St. Michael and St. George, 
284; reindeer experiment, 288-303; 
propaganda lecturing in England, 
331, 332; courtship, 333-337; en- 
largement of St. Anthony Hospital, 
338, 339; marriage and family, 342, 
343; assumption of cooperative 
store debt, 344-347; founding of 
Institute at St. John's, 349-353; 
lecture tour in U.S. and England, 
357-361; lecture tour again, 371- 
374; holiday in Asia Minor, 376- 
382; winter at base hospital in 
France (1915), 384-402; attacked 
by a St. John's newspaper, 403; 
growth and development of Mission, 
404-410; religious life, 424-434. 

Grenfell, Wilfred Thomason, Jr., 
342. 

Grenfell Association of America, the, 
280. 

Grenfell Town, 161. 

Grieve, Dr. John, 404. 

Haldane, Lord, 256. 

Halifax, visited by Grenfell, 159. 

Hare, Dr. Mather, work at Harring- 
ton, 275-276, 409. 

Harrington Hospital, Canadian Lab- 
rador, 418. 

Hause, Mr., of Pratt Institute, vol- 
unteer student helper, 325. 

Hearn longliners and trawlers, 183. 

Heligoland, visited by Grenfell, 90. 

Henley, or Chateau, Labrador, 168. 

Henson, Dr. Hensley, Bishop of Here- 
ford, 83, 84. 

Home, the Children's, 244-253. 

Hopedale, Labrador, 128, 131. 

Horsley, Sir Victor, doctor, 72. 

Hot-heads, launches used in open sea, 
275-279. 

Hudson Bay Company, the, 133, 216, 
276, 376. 

Huxley, Professor, his criticism of Eng- 
lish public school teaching, 40. 

Hyeres, France, 24. 

Iceland, 183-187. 

Illiteracy, in Newfoundland and Lab- 
rador, 255. 

Indian Harbour, site of one of Gren- 
fell's hospitals, 126. 

Indian Tickle, Labrador, site of a 



church built by Labrador Mission, 

165. 
Ingram, Rt. Rev. A. F. Winnington, 

Bishop of London, 83, 84. 
International Grenfell Association 

the, formation of, 358-359. 
Ireland, Archbishop, 268. 
Irish Poor-Relief Board, 109. 
Irving, Sir Henry, 80. 

Jackson, Rev. Dr. Sheldon, Presby- 
terian missionary in Alaska, 290. 

Job, the Honourable W. C, 403. 

Job, Mrs. W. C, 370. 

Jones, Rev. Dr. Edgar, 268. 

Jones, Sir Robert, orthopedic surgeon, 
359, 360, 385, 388. 

Jones, Mr. Walter, manager of Insti- 
tute at St. John's, 367. 

Julia Sheriden, the. Mission steamer, 
193, 196. 

Kean, Captain, of the S.S. Wolf, 180, 

181. 
Keese, Ruth (Mrs. John Mason Little, 

Jr.), 405. 
Kingsley, Charles, 2, 103, 187, 256. 
Komatik, description of a, 202, 203. 

Labrador, the Country and the People, 

139. 
Labrador, inhabitants of, 139, 140; 

climate of, 140, 141; fishing industry, 

141, 142; poverty of people, 142, 

148-153; superstition of people, 142- 

145; natural characteristics of , 156- 

158. 
Lake Forest, on Lake Michigan, Mrs. 

Grenfell's home, 336. 
Lapps, 292-294. 
Leacock, Stephen, his essay. How to 

Become a Doctor, 144, 145. 
Leslie, Olive, kindergartner, 260. 
Lewis Bay, Labrador, winter hospital 

station at, 404. 
Lighthouses, at Battle Harbour, 273; 

at White Point, 274; at Indian Har- 

boiu-, 274. 
Liquor traffic, the, Grenfell's hatred 

of, 79; his suppression of, at St. 

Anthony, 209-214; at St. John's, 

353-356. 
Lister, Sir Joseph, 70. 
Little, Dr. John Mason, 338, 404, 406, 

417. 



440 



INDEX 



Lloyd, Dr., Prime Minister of New- 
foundland, 382. 

Lodge, Sir Oliver, 430, 431. 

London Hospital and University, 
Grenfell's father chaplain of, 37; 
Grenfell's alma mater, 39. 

Loti, Pierre, 186. 

Luther, Jessie, 422. 

MacAusland, Dr. W. R., of Boston, 
381. 

MacClanahan, Anna Elizabeth Cald- 
well (Mrs. W. T. Grenfell), 336. 

MacClanahan, Colonel, father-in-law 
of Grenfell, 336. 

MacGregor, Sir William, Governor of 
Newfoundland, 291, 320-323. 

Mackenzie, Sir Stephen, 66. 

Marlborough School, 15-24, 27, 30-33. 

Marquis of Ripon, Minister to the 
Colonies, 286. 

Mason, A. E. W., novelist, 187. 

Matheson, Paul, volunteer helper of 
Grenfell, 318. 

McCook, Colonel Anson G., 281, 282. 

McGrath, Sir Patrick, 382. 

Methodist guards, the, 159, 353. 

Meyer, Hon. George von L., Post- 
master-General, 281, 282. 

Mill, the, on the "French Shore," 
Newfoundland, 226-238. 

Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen, 90. 

Montreal, visited by Grenfell, 160, 161. 

Moody, Dwight L., evangeUst, 45, 427. 

Moravian Brethren, the, their work 
with the Eskimos, 128, 129, 130, 132, 
140, 156, 207. 

Moravian Mission, 129-132. 

Muir, Ethel Gordon, teacher, 267. 

Murchison Prize, awarded Grenfell by 
the Royal Geographical Society, in 
1911, 323. 

Nain, Labrador, 130, 132. 

Nakvak, Labrador, 141; remains of 
Tunits there, 155. 

Napatuliarasok Island, Labrador, no- 
ted for its Labradorite, 156. 

Nasson Institute, 264. 

Needlework GuUd of America, the, 251, 
419. 

Newfoundland, independent colony 
of England, 139; Labrador owned 
by, 139; difference between North 
and South Newfoundland, 250. 



Nielsen, Adolph, Superintendent of 
Fisheries off Labrador, 117. 

O'Brien, Sir Terence, governor at St. 
John's, 117, 171. 

Paddon, Dr. and Mrs., 404, 405. 
Parkhurst, Dr. Charles H., of New 

York, 280. 
Peary, Admiral, return of from North 

Pole, 339-342. 
Pomiuk, Prince, Eskimo, 241-243. 
Pratt Institute, 256, 258, 264. 
Presbyterian Highland Brigade, the, 

353. 
Prince Edward Island, 240. 
Princess May, the midget steam 

launch, 127, 128. 
Public School Camps, 101. 

R.A.M.C., efficiency of in France, 

398-400. 
Raymond, Sir Oliver Lodge, 430, 431. 
Red Bay, Labrador, 218. 
Red Bay Cooperative Store, 219. 
Reed, William Howell, of Boston, 

292. 
Reikyavik, capital of Iceland, 184. 
Reindeer experiment, the, 290-303. 
Ripon, Marquis of, 159. 
Rivington, Sir Walter, surgeon, 70. 
Roddick, Su- Thomas, 162. 
Roosevelt, the, Peary's ship, 340, 341, 
Rowland, John, of Yale College, 277, 

278. 

St. Anthony, Newfoundland, 141; 
poverty of people, 194, 195; Gren- 
fell's first winter in, 197-214; Gren- 
fell's fight against liquor traffic, 209- 
214; headquarters of hospital sta- 
tions, 417. 

St. John's, burning of, 115, 116; seat 
of Newfoundland government, 139. 

Sands of Dee, the, 1-7. 

Sayre, Francis B., secretary of Gren- 
fell, 250, 338, 339, 341, 342, 374, 
375. 

Scilly Islands, 187. 

Seal Fishery, the, 172-182. 

Seyde Fjord, Iceland, visited by 
Grenfell, 186, 187. 

Sheard, Mr., 404. 

Sir Donald, the, mission steamer, 161, 
190, 191, 208. 



INDEX 



441 



Skiff, Captain, 183. 

Slogget, Sir Arthur, general, 385, 398, 

399. 
Smith, George Adam, quoted, 429. 
Southborough, Lord (Mr. Francis 

Hopwood), 113. 
Spalding, Katie, of The Children's 

Home, 251, 253. 
Spencer, Martyn, 290, 370. 
Stewart, Dr. and Mrs. Norman, 405. 
Stirling, W. R., 333, 337, 348, 407. 
Storr, Eleanor, of The Children's 

Home, 250, 253. 
Strathcona, Lord (Donald Smith), 
^ patron of Labrador Mission, 160, 

161; donor of the Strathcona, 191, 

376. 
Studd, J. E. and C. T., 45. 
Sutton, Dr., London Hospital, 69. 

Terschelling, visited by Grenfell, 90. 

Tickle, the Grenfell, 209. 

Tigris, the S.S., of the Polaris ex- 
pedition, 178. 

Tilt Cove, Newfoundland, 192, 193. 

Toilers of the Deep, The, magazine, 
280. 

Tralee, on Kerry coast, seat of a dis- 
pensary, 107. 

Treves, Sir Frederick, lecturer in 
anatomy and surgery in London 
Hospital and University, 43, 67-69, 
88, 187, 254, 285, 388; The Cradle of 
the Deep, 187. 

Trevize, skipper, 114. 

Truck Acts, 96. 



Ungava Bay, Labrador, 164, 208. 

Van Dyke, Dr. Henry, 362. 
Vestmann Islands, Iceland, visited by 

Grenfell, 184. 
Victoria, Queen, 104. 
Victoria Park, London, 81-82. 

Wakefield, Dr. Arthur, of England, 

368, 369. 
Wall Street Journal, quoted, 294, 295. 
Watson, the Honourable Robert, 403. 
Wellington, Duke of, 187. 
West, Dr., 275, 409. 
White, Emma E., secretary of Labra- 
dor Mission in Boston, 279, 324. 
White Bay, Labrador, 148. 
Whitechapel Road, site of London 

Hospital, 40. 
Whitney, Harry, 340. 
Williams, Miss, nurse, 126. 
Williams, George, 364, 365. 
Williams, Sir Ralph, governor of 

Newfoundland, 350-352. 
Willway, Dr., colleague of Grenfell, 

169. 
Wilson, Jessie, daughter of President 

Wilson, 374, 375. 
Wiltsie, Dr., his work in Labrador, 

363 364. 
Wolf, 'the S.S., wreck of, 180, 181. 

Yarmouth, institute for fishermen 
ashore, and dispensary vessel, 105. 

Y.M.C.A. in St. John's, 353; in France, 
389, 390. 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 






